The Information Society is emerging. Although the term has been discussed for years, it is only now we can foresee the actual impact of developments in information and communication technologies upon human beings. In the Information Society, dominated by knowledge and innovation, society itself becomes much less focused upon the technology and more upon the user. The individual who helps to create such a Society becomes its most crucial and important component. The research carried out now is more “socially constructive” and can be seen as a different approach to the “technology-centric” approach used previously.

This fact presents new challenges to the Information Society in the way it organizes the collection and treatment of scientific data, as well as their availability and accessibility to each citizen. It creates new conditions for youth in the current Digital Age and promotes exciting opportunities for the next generation of young scientists and businessmen. The result will be  further economic growth and improvements in such areas as health care and living standards, stimulated by industrial competitiveness along with research and technological innovation.

How can the present-day generation of wise and experienced scientists  help their young  successors ?  How are data transferred to  knowledge? What are the most effective  technologies for the huge number of data treatments and for the huge number of calculations? What are the best ways of transferring knowledge from one generation to the next? What are the most critical problems in  human life  to be solved by the joint efforts of this and future generations of scientists ? How do we establish the World Research Area for scientists co- operation?

The answers to these and other questions are expected to be given in the conference presentations.

The CODATA Prize is awarded biennially for outstanding achievements in the area of scientific and technical data including data management, evaluation, dissemination, access issues, archiving, international cooperation, etc.

More about CODATA can be found on http://www.codataweb.org/2008prize/prizenom.html