The Small Colleges are closing. All across the US small colleges that offered unique combinations of subjects – many of them arts subjects – are closing. What does this mean for the small class? The small class of say 15-20 students where discussions about art and society take off and can go anywhere precisely because of the size of the class? I’ve been reading a lot of academic grants from gifted academics and they all speak of the changes coming to academia because of AI. They all say we must grasp this opportunity. And we must; and yet there is a sense that the irreplaceable small class full of discussion and off-line engagement is disappearing. Colleges want us all staring at big screens and small screens, using all the haptic and ergodic tools at our disposal, but what of the voice and the hand-eye coordination essential to speech and discussion. What of the haptics of the conversation?