The tension between emancipation and alienation, between autonomous behaviour and passive consumption, has been both central and fertile in how the "digital society" has emerged and structured itself, and will likely remain so in the future. There is no lack of work on bottom-up innovation, as well as on the contribution of "consumers" to the design and the improvement of the devices and services that they use. Several major industry players have proved capable of harnessing that energy. The CAPACITY project will focus on the multiple, concrete ways in which empowerment "happens" or fails to happen. It will study how capacities are being distributed to ordinary users, allowing them to become tinkerers, innovators, makers, micro-entrepreneurs. It will aim at understanding the conditions on which the emergence and sustainability of bottom-up dynamics rest: peer learning and mediations, networks and communities, regional ecosystems, socio-technical infrastructures and configurations... In the digital age context, empowerment may offer a new social ladder, disrupt powers, suggest new ways for emancipation and innovation. On the contrary, it may distribute capacities to those who already have the most important social capital, increase inequality, establish new forms of domination and passive behaviours. Favorable conditions for appropriation and empowerment are still unclear. These conditions are key factors to consider when making public policy, planning innovation and solving collective issues generated by the "digital society". The CAPACITY researchers will benefit from considerable amount of material gathered by Fing over the years ("Crossroad of Possibilities" network; Open Data; Fab Labs; Citizen-led innovation; e-Inclusion, etc.) Their work will henceforth focus on three fecund regional ecosystems: Bretagne, Ile de France and Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur.