Mut@nt children?

Thinking, knowing, informing, memorising,

learning, teaching, moving, being…

The ongoing digital revolution is creating

Mankind 2.0 at a staggering pace. How can we

analyse its changing and evolving trajectories in

real time?

Children are at the forefront of this

transformation, and provide for startling

observations: 3-year old Alex won’t fall asleep

without his tablet computer; 9-year old Leo won’t

do any school exercise that is not computer based;

at the age of 13, Adele already suffers from thumb

tendinitis because of her many tweets and chats

to her hundreds of “friends”. Max, 16, won’t leave

the virtual – yet very real – world of online games.

What are we learning from these first digital

native generations? Is there a cognitive and

behavioural mutation of children? An intellectual

and affective transformation? An exceptional

epistemological evolution of mankind?

Questioning the development of little

humans in the now globalised TV and digital

universe, their new thinking patterns, their brain

development and functioning, and the potential

differences with previous generations brains, is

becoming an urgent necessity: in which society

will they live? What psychological, educational

and ethical challenges and needs will we have to

address tomorrow?

With no defiance nor excitement towards

innovation, without pessimism or panicmongering,

this 3-day symposium will give the

participants the opportunity to stand still the time

of an evaluation, to think the unthinkable, to

observe the reckless pace of our evolution, to

analyse with a pragmatic yet curious eye the

consequences for today’s and tomorrow’s

children, de-facto positioned in a phylogenetic and

dynamic perspective.

Psychologists, philosophers, epistemologists,

historians and sociologists will present

the current base of knowledge and the scientific

and intellectual analytical frame 

framework, and will

share with lawmakers, doctors, economists,

politicians and social actors the amazing human

variations, to clearly identify the contemporary

challenges that defy our children, or should we

say mut@nts.