Introduction

This paper is the result of a bibliographical research on the impact of the multi-screen society, the result of the vertiginous technological development of the last decades, and the processes of half-formation that are managed in it. The loss of quality of human experiences in the midst of this technological development is noticeable. Are the new technologies impoverishing the human being and unfolding a scenario of half-formation? Therefore, reflecting on human formation in the light of technological advances nowadays is indispensable.

The theoretical substratum of this text is to reflect, outlined by the foundations of the ‘critical theory of society,’ about half-formation (Halbbildung) in the ‘multi-screen society’ mediated by new technologies. In a particular way, to analyze the formation process in this scenario marked by the massification of technique and the reduction of the capacity to think and act critically, in a process of trivialization of the meaning of life. The major challenge is to curb this process through ‘enlightenment’ and the development of the critical-reflexive and ethical capacity of the human being.

Our research is guided by the critical view of ^{Adorno and Horkheimer (1985}, p. 8), who punctuate the issues of regression, barbarity and obfuscation, projecting them on the current ‘multi-screen society’ in its technological development, its instrumentalization of reason and the consequent process of formation or half-formation. This critical view gains special force when we read in the preface to ‘the dialectics of enlightenment’ the following statement: ‘What we proposed was in fact nothing less than to discover why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism’ (Adorno; Horkheimer, 1985, p. 8).

The bibliographic methodology is concerned with reflecting, in the light of the thinkers of the so-called first generation of the Frankfurt School - M. Horkheimer, T. W. Adorno - and of complementary readings, on the new technologies of this ‘multi-screen society,’ which induces unusual patterns of behavior and sociability that demand the activity of instrumental reason and half-formation. The paths point to a possible way out, which is to firmly cling to formation, even after society has already deprived of its basis in accordance with instrumental reason. However, the only possibility of survival left to culture (Bildung) is the critical self-reflection on half-formation, into which the multi-screen society has become⁴.

A contradiction scenario

The new technologies in society bring a new way of thinking about the world and, consequently, the formation process itself, the result of the development of today's instrumental reason. The technological agora has been presented as the ‘new’ model of society that has been entering all environments. It changes the perspective of social life and work. Professionals of various levels feel the need to rethink methods, techniques and skills. Citizens in general face unusual patterns of behavior and sociability, influenced by technologies, managing their tastes, attitudes, as well as their imaginary.

This ongoing transformation, under pressure from the media, is part of the ‘multi-screen society’ which, according to Rivoltella⁵ (apud ^{Fantin; Girardello, 2012}, p. 41), allows us to identify three characteristics of this society, such as: the multiplication of viewing spaces, especially with the computer screen and laptops in general, in addition to the already classic cinema and television screens. We live with a multiplicity of screens in public spaces, such as airports, stations and shopping malls. We are accompanied by the screens of portable DVDs, palmtops and fourth and fifth generation mobile phones. We are changing the mode and meaning of viewing, which is being reconfigured quickly and profoundly with the new technologies. We are living in the midst of a mosaic of mobile and decontextualized visual stimuli, wandering from screen to screen, in an intermittent and interactive way.

The training processes mediated by the new technologies establish the instances of formation understanding which, in an accelerated way, are becoming true appendages of the cultural industry. There is a progressive deterioration in the training of individuals and in the growing unpreparedness of teachers, who are becoming more and more neglected, accentuating half-formation and spreading the massification of knowledge and know-how, especially with the increase in technical domination that damages the possibility of developing autonomy and the existence of subjectivities. ^{Adorno and Horkheimer (1985}, p. 114) state that this society is basically the terrain in which technique gains its power, that is, ‘today, technical rationality is the rationality of domination itself.’

The training processes, in general, and of teachers, in particular, are involved in cultural practices mediated by the new information technologies, which have been constituted with ‘power’ and being ‘accepted without resistance’ (^{Adorno; Horkheimer, 1985}, p. 114). Practices that, in a hallucinatory and spectacular way, produce new routines, new forms of interaction, new languages and, also, configure new modalities of understanding and representation of social meanings; thus, they need a critique of cultural formation (Bildung) that, in a certain way, has conformed to late capitalism and technical progress, commanded by technological rationality and the instrumentalization of reason.

And, in the midst of this cultural formation (Bildung), the challenge of formulating, in practice and theory, a critical education of the individual as an emancipatory process is presented, developing its capacity to capture contradictions and resist. However, in this capitalist and technically advanced context, this critical education is held back by the development of adaptation and objectification. It is the phenomenon that ^{Adorno (2003}) calls half-formation (Halbbildung).

The computer network, with its fast information, packaged by new technologies, presents itself as a new way of enhancing knowledge that opens perspectives in terms of research and interactions. However, it requires the involvement of all the actors to be benefited, from the youngest children to the most experienced adult. There is, in a certain way, a dynamism with which technological advances occur and has in view the early access of new generations to this technology marked by computers, cell phones, tablets, laptops, etc., needing methodologies and strategies consciously planned in order to contribute to training for humanization and not the mere adaptation of subjects.

We wonder about growth and technical development on the one hand and the human capacity to ‘reason’ on the other. Technological forms of communication, for example, interfere with the process of cognition, being able, with technological mediation among people, cultures and civilizations, to generate less solidary sociabilities and adapted mentalities. The information would be being managed in view of its functional dimension. From the period of the discovery of fire to the present day, technology has its power of prominence in this process of change and development, moving in the sense that ‘the curse of irrepressible progress is the irrepressible regression’ (^{Adorno; Horkheimer, 1985}, p. 11).

Technology, instrumental reason and half-formation

Since the 1970s, the world has been hit by revolutionary and technological waves that have strongly modified our relationships with things, with people. From that period on, technological development has found its apex in the assembly of technical progress, involving the phenomenon of globalization that has taken on wide proportions, mainly in what refers to speed and agility in the exchange of information and of goods and services; social networks have expanded, fed by large Internet browsers with the use of computers of higher technology. This has had direct impacts on the social life of individuals and, consequently, on their own cultural formation. (^{Adorno, 2003}).

In this technologically enhanced society, the preferential stage is in the human-machine relationship, which accompanies the generation of an artificial world, in which the user can inhabit, interact, love, suffer, enjoy and even think about an alternative world. ^{Pucci (2009}, p. 73) states that, ‘for many, virtual reality is becoming their everyday reality.’

The use of technological resources, such as the use of computers, has been acting towards an apparent improvement in the quality of human life, mainly because of the speed in obtaining information and because it is something attractive and different for individuals of all ages. It is possible to see a child under two years of age ‘connected’ to a computer or cell phone for a long period.

The computer technology has so many possibilities that, nowadays, the implementation of virtual courses through the global system of interconnected computer networks, that is, the Internet, is already a reality. It is a great resource that modern society has at its disposal and that helps in the resolution of the most varied social and educational problems possible. It is known that information technology is present in all places and sectors of society, from home to work, going through multiple forms of leisure, etc. Therefore, it is almost unlikely that no technological resource has been used in our days; even mobile phones have a sophisticated apparatus of resources that is gradually being updated.

The Internet, as a technology, presents the computer as the main instrument. It is a primordial tool, which has received a greater attention from scientists and researchers in the most different areas of knowledge. For these lenses, ^{Prado (1999}, p. 99) states that ‘the learning of a new educational reference involves changes in values, conceptions, ideas and, consequently, attitudes.’

In this sense, the order of insertion in the current context consists of an individual determined by the mastery of technology, synonymous with intellectual refinement and competence for work. The very autonomization of technologies and the fetishization of their use, with the advantages associated to speed, productivity, makes the ‘technical progress’ be justified even when the results are heading towards regression and irrationality, since they ‘obstinately insist on the ideology that enslaves them’ (^{Adorno; Horkheimer, 1985}, p. 125).

It is through these statements that we direct our gaze to the current technological screen. In fact, we identify the constitution of a thought directed to progress, believing that this new time, which has the new technologies as its background, is the best moment in history and in human relations. We cultivate the belief, unmeasured, that we are in a moment of greater conquest and freedom, when, in fact, we have never been so prisoner of our own conquests, we have never been so debilitated in front of the technique as we are today.

Pucci leads us to think about the dehumanization implemented by the capitalist system governed by new technologies when he states that ‘the spirit man is an endangered specimen; in his place, he victimizes the supposedly realistic man’ (Pucci, 2009, p. 70, author's emphasis). He adds:

The images and cultural forms that characterized it were replaced by the images of the film artists, and by the successful songs, which, with their produced beauty, their lyrics and their standardized titles, radiated a calculated brightness. Good table manners and treatment with the other, the waste of time in choosing a gift for the beloved person, the slow construction of lasting experiences, the scrupulous precision in the way one expresses oneself, the sudden presence of the act of learning by heart and the testimony of the memory of things, are progressively and definitely exchanged for direct treatment, functionality, precision, speed, the memory of machines (^{Pucci, 2009}, p. 70).

The new technologies enhance the atrophy of spontaneity and the pruning of the critical spirit. According to ^{Adorno (2003}, pp. 13-14), the moment of spontaneity characterizes ‘formation as something distinct from the mechanisms of social mastery of nature,’ with atrophy being the opposite. The atrophy of spontaneity and the pruning of the critical spirit thus result in cultural half-formation: ‘Cultural formation now becomes a socialized half-formation, the omnipresence of the alienated spirit, which, according to its genesis and its meaning, does not precede cultural formation, but succeeds it’ (Adorno apud ^{Pucci; Zuin; Lastoria, 2010}, p. 9).

Adorno (apud ^{Pucci; Zuin; Lastoria, 2010}) clarifies that the symptoms of collapse of cultural formation, which are observed everywhere, are not exhausted by the shortcomings of a technological system that increasingly traps individuals in the meshes of ‘illusory’ socialization. It is no different in the formation process of teachers who, deluded by rapid and ethereal information, let themselves be carried away by the dynamic and attractive technological knowledge that, in a way, dilutes conflicts and the ability to think critically. Now, machines qualify the individual to behave in accordance with the desires of the technique, entertaining them for hours in front of the screen or their cell phone, which would not happen in a meeting of friends. The absorption of information is direct, without debate, without sharing knowledge, distancing itself from the critical spirit contained in human relationships.

There is an incongruity between technological development and human emancipation, and in that sense ^{Horkheimer (2002}, p. 7) warns us:

It seems that, while technical knowledge expands the horizon of human activity and thought, man's autonomy as an individual, his capacity to resist, the growing mechanism of manipulation of the masses, his power of imagination and his independent judgment have apparently been reduced. The advance of technical information resources is accompanied by a process of dehumanization. Thus, the process threatens to annul what is supposed to be its own goal: the idea of man.

The intellectual debilitation mediated by technology is so notorious that it is enough for someone of great image effervescence to pronounce himself/herself in social networks in order to trigger a response of worship and notorious deification, with the use of symbols and words of approval. Talks without theoretical consistency and involved by the nebulous and unconscious anchor of half-formation are ‘applauded’ by a group of followers who discuss everything, but who know very little of what they discuss. The images of professional and formation power overwhelm the ability to reflect on the information that is shared daily on social and communication networks, including by so-called teachers and opinion makers.

These images of teaching empowerment, in this case produced by information technology, create meaning and operate in a context in which the diversity of social struggles and modes of contestation are submerged. The manipulation is based on a central strategy of ‘making oneself seen’ in an instrumental society that relies on the superficiality of things and relationships.

Given such a technological network of information, formation types are spreading, which are nothing more than the mere weak repetition of things. If we visit social networks of teachers who call themselves intellectually trainers and researchers, there is the great disappointment of what we see, hear and read in the scenario of precarious socialization in tune with the ‘glow of false empty rationality.’ (Adorno apud ^{Pucci; Zuin; Lastoria, 2010}, p. 12, emphasis added).

In the scenario of a formally empty society, dehumanization is felt and perceived, according to Ramos-de-Oliveira (2003, p. 117), in the ‘immense process of sweetened return of frequent and empty common-sense opinions’ via technological networks of information and communication. Without forgetting to mention the diverse educational professionals, in this case, teachers, who until then kept a history of human life and professional ethics respected, are now mere prey of the cultural and technological industry for ‘breaking the barriers of the formation and to be immediately swallowed and to be reproduced in overwhelming rhythm in an eternal equality so well denounced by the critical theory’ (Ramos-de-Oliveira, 2003, p. 117).

Thus, teachers weakened in their training allow themselves to be manipulated by a certain technological and marketing submission, with the advertising of themselves and of what they produce for a single banal purpose, that is, they make merchandise with the appeal: ‘buy me.’ In this regard, we cite the pressure for the growth of individual productivity, standardized, quantified, as if we were in a competition of scientific articles published in qualified journals in the great arena of the academic marketing industry:

Making a living is filling out the curriculum and, in these terms, the repeated, slow and meditative readings disappear, as well as the creative idleness, during which the brain reorders the materials incorporated in it and proceeds with the discoveries and inventions. Isn't it fascinating that genius scientists have published fewer articles than any modest teacher of our days? (^{Bernardo, 2014}, p. 74).

Also, there are the reproduction and exhibition of all his/her ‘trades’ as a master in social networks (trips, lectures, events, etc.), spreading his/her own image with the breaking of his intimacy. This image and intimacy end up being opened by windows, doors and gates that expose personal life, as well as love and family relationships. We are faced with the weak spread of self-image lost in various selfies, in turn corrected by an image and photography programs that take away the naturalness and the very human essence of this individual. There is, in a certain way, the reduction of the person ‘to the status of a bagatelle when everything this person thinks and does is exposed to the eyes of others’ (^{Bernardo, 2014}, p. 74).

The protective boundaries of the individual are removed because he/she publicly exposes all his/her gestures to all eyes: ‘Whoever does not constantly draw attention to himself/herself, whoever does not cause a sensation, runs the risk of not being noticed’ (^{Türcke, 2010}, p. 37). The practical accomplishment of this paradox is one of the greatest ideological and technological triumphs of capitalism, which opens an era of undisputed domination. The triumph is so complete that the exacerbation of I myself and the settlement of privacy are left to each person. At the same time, the social point is destroyed by the concentration on the individual point, diluting the boundaries of the individual by the suppression of privacy. To this paradox, we call futility.

Thus,

The cultural industry, in its broadest dimension [...], perpetuates this situation, exploiting it, and assuming itself as a culture in line with integration, which, if it is really this, it will not be that. Its spirit is semiculture, identification. The rude jests about the new rich people who confuse foreign words stubbornly endure, because they express a mechanism that leads all those who laugh together to delude themselves of having achieved identification. This is an attempt doomed to failure (Adorno apud ^{Pucci; Zuin; Lastória, 2010}, p. 19).

By the new technologies and cultural industry, the great task of deceiving, transmitting the appearance as if it were the truth, and liquefying any conscience that breaks, with the typical resistance of criticism, the ‘solid’ walls of half-formation is accomplished. Allied to technology, the information industry feeds ideology, in the sense of a falsified vision of the social reality of individuals, through the mediation of profit, technique, instrumental reason; it converts everything into packaged merchandise ready to be devoured or, even, to devour anyone who thinks they have it.

On this subject, let us refer to ^{Türcke (2010}, p. 15), which brings the discussion about the ‘news makers’ in the highly ‘technified’ society. Often, they need to decide, in a matter of minutes or even seconds, which news is conveyed by means of attractive and deviant words and images, mediated by the frontier of counterfeiting. In fact, the whole spectacle of the information produced is just a new outfit that masks the old one already known.

This technological society is structured like no other society before, undermining everything that seemed natural: ‘established relationships of work, property and assets, habits overcome, rituals, belief foundations, common rhythms and common life extensions, speed, thinking and perception ways’ (^{Türcke, 2010}, p. 9). In this way, our cultural formation is being swallowed up by the excitement of half-formation.

Technological magic is felt by ‘the eternity of an instant, by the image of the landscape of a body, by the infinity of a changing blue of an eyelid closure,’ by the spectacular slogan of a scientific magazine qualified by evaluative systems, by the spectacular photographic images exhibited from international trips (^{Türcke, 2010}, p. 26). All of this is so versatile that the limits of its use are now far from being discovered or even imagined, mainly because it has produced drastic changes in our way of acting, perceiving and thinking; moreover, its dizzying presence and its practical effects are felt in all social environments.

The great undertaking consists of the singular and ethical individuals who have not fallen entirely into this crucible of half-formation. Hope lies in the bet of what is the expression of the truly human, and not in its current simulacrum.

Ethical-human-social challenge before technological advances

To think about all these questions posed in a technically managed society, keeping ethics at the center of our concerns before technological advances, constitutes an instigating intellectual challenge, mainly because the formation process has been configured fragile and discredited in the face of the introduction of new technologies, in which the ‘new’ becomes useful and abundant, propagating a functionalist and instrumental formation (half-formation) adapted to a technological system that increasingly devours the individuals who use it.

Motivated by this challenge, as well as by its urgency, we launch efforts to advance the reflections about this social and technological environment that has weakened individuals in general and educational professionals in particular.

There is the devaluation of teachers, who, like others, in a majority, allow themselves to live this half-formation virus, with reduced classes of their critical character, with the quantifiable pressure of scientific publications that end up producing texts about ‘everything’ (all subjects) in the sea of superficiality; with hallucinated expositions of themselves, in the struggle for the guarantee of a glitter space in society and education, among other half-formation effects. Also, the repetition and conformism in the production are perceived with publications of common subjects and involved in the research thematic fad, since the researcher ends up reading and writing what all the others have read or written. All this thanks to Google, which is today the main search engine on the Internet and which, in a certain way, ‘incorporates, in its system of ordering the websites, the same evaluation criteria that presides over the curricula, putting in first place the most visited sites’ (^{Bernardo, 2014}, p. 76).

^{Adorno (2003}, pp. 113-114) states that the blockage of experience (critical cultural formation) at the present time sends us back to the ‘psychodynamic’ mechanism of repression in favor of the ‘always identical,’ uniformed, massified and totally administered society. In relation to this ‘adhesion’, we can refer to the weakness of I myself, which is nothing more than half-formation: a blockage of the will, as ^{Kant would say (1980}).

In order to overcome this situation which distresses human beings, which is a characteristic of the technological and post-industrial society, one of the proposals is the ethical-human-social one. It is a question of organizing the ‘land’ of men and women in favor of the humanization of people who, in this current context, are in crisis of the human, a crisis of ethics par excellence. ^{Agostini (2007}, p. 217) states that ‘the human being himself needs a source from which to put down roots in order to firm his life and respond adequately to the challenges that echo everywhere,’ clarifying us about the lack of ethics, recurrent in this social context, which has extended to all fields of social life, including the individual himself. This ethical absence can be clarified by the pauperization of the experience of thinking, echoing over the mechanisms that render barbarism unconscious as if it were a necessary synonym of illustration and technical progress.

Adorno, in his writings, preferred to talk more about morals than ethics, although the literature on a possible ethics from the Adorno´s philosophy grows in the context of his writings. In his contributions to the field of ethics, Adorno, through the ‘minimum morality’ (1992), introduces us to a fragmented investigation on moral issues inserted in apparently insignificant moments of concrete reality. There is also evidence of moral philosophy in the work Negative Dialectics (1970), with the writings on the freedom that is born as a determined critique of Kant and historical-theoretical reflection on the theme.

The effort, in this text, is to try to reconstruct the point of view on the relationship between ethics and social practice (technology), especially with the work ‘dialectics of enlightenment’ (1985). This means identifying that the human being is being reached in what is most profound, which is his conscience, with the tacit acceptance of the instrumental customs of reason as a natural law: ‘in fact, the subject Ulysses denies his own identity, which makes him a subject, and keeps himself alive by mimicking what is amorphous’ (^{Adorno; Horkheimer, 1985}, p. 86). The conclusion of this episode denounces the whole problem involved with the annihilation, even if symbolic, of I myself.

In the ethical-human-social quest, Adorno considers the strengthening of the I myself as an antithesis, that is, in the sense of resisting the attacks of the standardizing and unifying system of society, which robs the individual of his/her ability to experiment. In this I myself, Adorno explicitly associates criticism as an internal domain of nature to the educational process of which we are not only participants, but active vectors. On this subject, he directs this path to teachers, who, while repressed in the weirdness, return ‘mannerisms of speech, symptoms of petrification, paralysis and inability’ (Adorno, 1995, pp. 78-79).

^{Agostini (2007}, p. 218) states that the ‘ethical crisis of our days demands a plunge into the roots of the human being. It is, in fact, a question of asking ourselves who this person is in his origin, that is, in his essence,’ not to flee from historical challenges, but to mobilize him ‘in that which is vital to him,’ while he is distinguished by ‘critical, reflective and discerning capacity’ (p. 225). On this subject, we can establish a relation with ^{Marcuse (1988}, p. 20), who presents the reason (critical consciousness) as an objective historical force capable of freeing individuals from the shackles of tyranny and oppression and making the world a place of progress and happiness. He states: ‘All fictions disappear before the truth, and all foolishness settles before reason’ (Marcuse, 1988, p. 20). In this sense, enlightenment is not the mechanical result of a revolution, but a slow process, for the change in the way of thinking is slow and painful, historical and personal:

For this clarification, however, nothing is required except freedom. And the most harmless of all that may call freedom, namely, that of making public use of your reason in all matters. ...] The public use of his reason must always be free, and only he can make the clarification (^{Marcuse, 1988}, pp. 102-103).

Therefore, the attempt to overcome barbarism is decisive for the survival of humanity, with the denunciation by the self-reflection of the hegemonic presence of an instrumental rationality that suffocates everyone. To overcome or resist barbarism along the path of ethics is to supply oneself with the autonomy to accomplish the designs of the human species, as well as the recognition of the (free) subjectivity of the other.

The formation must, anchored by ethics, be involved by the free and autonomous conscience of the individual, ‘without status and without exploitation,’ serving as an antithesis to half-formation (Adorno apud ^{Pucci; Zuin; Lastória, 2010}, p. 13). The challenge of ‘unfolding the ethical capacity of the human being’ as an ethical subject resounds very strongly, developing ‘the capacity for criticism, reflection and discernment, being able to interpret, as an ethical-critical subject, his/her own existence in the historical circumstances in which he/she lives’ (^{Agostini; Silva; Silveira, 2017}, p. 2017).

Final considerations

The diverse and complex doubts that currently hang over the horizons of the formation processes mediated by new technologies involve both the reflection and the viability of the project of a cultural formation aimed at the (free) autonomy of individuals (Bildung), just as this project figured in German romanticism. In this sense, it guides us to think of new contours assumed by the critical self-reflection of thought and practice, committed to the emancipatory formation of subjects in this present time.

Our ethical-human-social need demands a legitimate autonomy that does not allow us to forget that the price of such accommodation is also the relaxation of our critical vigilance and the renunciation of our duty. For this reason, it is essential to invest in the ‘formation of the Ethical Subject,’ which, for ^{Rodrigues (2001}, p. 246), ‘crowns the whole educational process,’ emphasizing that ‘this can only occur through the acquisition of the highest degree of awareness of social responsibility of each human being and it is expressed in participation, cooperation, solidarity and respect for individuality and diversity.’ More than training for knowledge and skills, in a conformation and training proper to the current administered society, we need to educate for emancipation and autonomy. The formation process has in this its fundamental objective, that is, the formation of the ethical, critical-reflexive subject, capable of action and reflection, in the sense of praxis, as ‘indissoluble unity between my action and my reflection on the world’ (^{Freire, 2008}, p. 30).

Adorno's and Horkheimer's thought places an acute reflection on the impasses and emancipatory perspectives via technological advances, provoking us to think of possibilities of a truly critical formation in the midst of the cultural formation milestones of the current context of widespread half-formation. In Notes on Theory and Practice, Adorno (1992b, p. 97) states: ‘Thinking is a way of acting and theory is a way of practice.’ In this perspective, Adorno strengthens critical thinking, and theory, in a non-free world, is the herald of freedom.