Basic, Applied and Technological Research:

Abstract

Our purpose in this paper is to offer an historical account of the relationship between basic, applied and technological research, as found in a case study of the Institute of Research in Applied Mathematics and Systems (IIMAS) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). We found that researchers who have dedicated themselves full-time to the development of technology related to computing science have, in their academic careers, faced a system of evaluation based upon an ideal of basic science: this results in an adverse environment for the development of technological research; and this, in turn, has negative consequences for basic research itself, as the achievements of basic and experimental science cannot be understood nowadays without any active collaboration between technology and theory. The concepts which give rise to the different forms of evaluation at UNAM resulted more from a value-ridden symbolic construction, than from the processes of the actual production of new knowledge.