Lead researcher: Verónica Uribe del Águila (PhD student, Communication)
This multi-site research integrates quantitative and qualitative methods to explore how Latin American makers communities manage, and frame as desirable, the economic risk inherent in fast prototyping projects. As sociotechnical systems or networks developed in the United State are rendered global, it is important to research, along with their origins, the shapes they take when deployed in other contexts.
This research investigates 3 questions:
1) How do makers cultures– built around values of prototype, innovation and do it yourself practices (DIY) –transform economic perception and sensibilities in Latin American countries?
2) How do practices at maker spaces in Latin America build on as much as help legitimize forms of technological, economic and cultural transformation in the region?
3) How do fast prototyping technologies–3D printers, printed board circuits, and open-source fast-prototyping platforms –as well as the transnational networks in which they circulate and the narratives they produce –help normalize, operationalize and standardize a global form of “venture labor”?