What do knowledge and transmission mean today?

From 2010 April 14th to April 16th 2010, a European seminar related to contemporary issues in knowledge and knowledge transmission will take place in Cité Internationale of Paris, launched and directed by Group 38.
The Group 38 was initiated by French association “Les Petits Débrouillards” in 2008 during the French Presidency of European Union in order to follow and strengthen a project that aimed to generate analysis, critics and recommendations from young European citizen from all European countries towards European institution (mainly European commission and Ministers of research).
The Group 38 is actually composed by European experts and scientists. The Group 38 has decided in June 2009 to contribute and to stimulate analysis, thoughts and even research about actual relations between science and society issues,focused on young people topics.
We, as some members of this group, have developed what we could call a “double-question”: is the digital world inevitable? Do we enter into a dynamic and “logic” of social and cognitive prosthesis? Social prosthesis because we could substitute to the “social presence of human beings” a “logic” of “social networks”; socio-cognitive prosthesis when we begin to search on Google without knowing precisely what we are searching.
This societal debate firstly affects the young people in one hand, education and transmission processes on the other hand. This is a difficult debate because young people never knew the “world before digital times”, that digital times are part of their realities et that older people can be seen by them as “has-been”. To keep clear ideas and analysis in these matters is difficult.
This is why the proposition of building a space of thoughts bringing together young and older people, experts, scientists and practitioners seem very useful for us, if it could be permanent and not only a one-shot initiative. We have to contribute to a permanent updating of the science/techniques/society interactions. More, one day, young people will be old et will have to face a younger generation born with mobile phone at the age of 10. This implicates to think about the actual tendency of focusing “technological dimensions” of the debate and to go back to foundations such as communication, information analysis and connected notions and concepts. Many young people ignore these notions when they provide theoretical substrates to understand actual evolutions without being hypnotized by digital worlds and fairies.
Thus, we invite you to a dynamic reflexive seminar. This exploratory seminar will not be centred on “digital issues” but must be understood as a seminar which uses digital issues to help us to re-interrogate major questions: transmission and knowledge issues,
intergenerational links on educative and transmission issues, the necessary strengthening of skills and competencies, know-how of young generations.
More, the question of transmission is very specific in front of demographic reality of our societies, where ageing imposes to anticipate risks and consequences older generations did not face.
This is the main objective that this seminar want to explore: to outline how such a collective reflection could be done and managed, thanks to a platform opened to researchers, leaders, decision-makers social and educative movements interested in youth issues.