The Touch . . . The Feeling . . . The Key . . .

“The Touch” from Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam

Michelangelo painted the Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and then painted everything else around that one concept---the concept that a more powerful force "touched" man suggests that an energy came from an intelligence down to man through the sense of touch.

We are blessed as humans with the potential for five senses, the sense of smell, the sense of sound, the sense of taste, the sense of sight and that key sense---the sense of touch.

We sense the world in five different ways but all of these senses are really based on feeling. Someone may have lost his sense of sight but he can still feel the warmth of the sun on his face, or someone may have lost the sense of sound but she can feel the vibration of the music with her feet on the floor.

Both of these senses can be assisted and enhanced by other means of feeling. A sightless person can use a cane to feel for his step, a deaf and sightless person can also learn to communicate by feeling as Helen Keller did, by someone’s touch and learn to feel a new way to communicate by using sign language.

The absence of the sense of taste and smell are indeed great losses but one can still feel the texture of the food and enjoy some tactile pleasure.

Thus it seems evident that the sense of touch is by far the most important of all of the senses. We can survive without the senses of smell, sound, taste, and sight, but it is very difficult for humans to survive without some sense of touch or feeling. We know from experience that newborns who are not touched are stilted in their development.

This sometimes elusive sense of touch is the most complex sense. We can experience a touch without actual physical contact. We have all experienced this feeling of touch and connection when we have been touched by a beautiful picture, touched by love, touched by words and touched by music although we have made a different type of “touch” connection with other human beings in these instances. We know that touch can be accomplished in more than one dimension.

Can we touch and truly feel other human beings in cyberspace? This is our paramount concern in online high tech, high touch environments---can we still really bridge the physical distance that separates every human being in the learning experience by using a spiritual form of touch and feeling that bridges that chasm??

This is the challenge we face as we enter this new frontier. We can see a “flat” impression of our fellow sojourners in a picture, we can hear their voices streaming on the Wimba connection but can we create this illusive sense of deeply touching and feeling the hearts and minds of our fellow travelers in cyberspace?

How do we experience a multi-dimensional construct of these shadows in cyberspace? What will work best to breathe life into these forms so that we can truly connect and feel the depths of their beings? What will bring them alive to each of us as we search to create a deeper, more meaningful bond?

This is the problem that we are working to overcome in this new realm of cyber realism. Perhaps I am a dreamer, and perhaps I prefer to dwell on the future and the positive resonance of why not instead of on the current shortcomings of why?

For you see, I envision a not too distant future when the current online environment will seem antiquated. We stand on the precipice of an online world where we will be able to smell the acrid smell of sulphur as we work on our understanding of chemistry or smell the sweet scent of the roses as Elisabeth Bennet rambles through the garden in Pride and Prejudice. I see an online environment where children will be able to touch a screen that will transform into the feel of a reptile.

Think only of the difference between Pong or Pac Man and the Wii environment of today. What a difference! It was not that long ago that MS-DOS was an exciting new means of communication!!

The new technologies that Jan has introduced us to makes me realize more than every that our role as instructors in cyberspace is to remain as perpetual learners, always willing to open our minds to the possibilities and to be willing to constantly embrace change, and change again.

We must be willing to learn and relearn and learn again and again as we are forced to cast off traditional methods and notions that no longer are applicable in these uncharted waters.

I feel certain that all of these new applications, all of the ever changing technologies, and the constantly evolving nature of this seemingly endless frontier will sometimes seem daunting. There will be moments of disappointment for all of us when we feel that we will never be able to bridge the chasm that sometimes seems so evident as it lies between us in cyberspace, but I am also confident that there will be those indescribable moments when we have breakthroughs of brilliance and when they occur we will feel rewarded beyond our wildest dreams.

Who can forget the moment in the Miracle Worker when Helen instructed by Anne Sullivan finally realizes that she can communicate and touches everything wanting all that input and realizing that she could communicate in a medium that many had shrugged their shoulders at and simply said could not be done. ( I know even now we are surrounded by doubters).


But that moment in the Miracle Worker, that is the type of “ah-ha” moment that I am waiting to be a part of experiencing and creating. There are no limits to human potential and there are also no limits on how we can “touch” other human beings or in how they can learn.

Keep believing in the potential. Keep looking up and just as Michelangelo did-----pick up your brush and paint all of the other senses---everything around that one key concept----touch. I can feel it now, online learning is going to be a masterpiece of human ingenuity and we all have an opportunity to add brilliance and color to the canvas of what could be our own magnum opus.