Multiscreen society and the semiformation: a great proportion ethical challenge

Abstract

The theoretical substrate in this text is to reflect, based on the foundations of the Critical Theory of Society, about the semiformation (Halbbildung) in a multiscreen society, and mediated by new technologies. In particular, our intention is to think about the impacts on the formative process in the midst of the current scenario marked by the massification of technique and the brutalization of thought keeping at bay critical thinking. Cultural formation or formative experience has conformed to the frameworks of late capitalism and technical progress which, in fact, are commanded by technological rationality, thus favoring the flowering of semiformation. The methodology, of a bibliographical nature, grounds our reflection in M. Horkheimer and T. W. Adorno, thinkers of the first generation of the Frankfurt School, and secondary readings. The focus of our research is centered on the new technologies of this "multiscreen society", which easily surrenders to the tutelage of instrumental reason and drifts into semiformation. One possible way out is in formation and in a culture (Bildung) capable of a critical self-reflection about the semiformation which it has become. The ethical challenge posed is the need of a theoretical-practical reflection from a human standpoint against this state of barbarism, in favor of the human being, autonomous, free, subject.