Recently, in the rhetoric class I teach at Boston University, we read an essay that included a forward by Arthur Clarke. I opened the discussion by asking who Arthur Clarke was. My students all just looked at me. They must practice variations on the blank stare late at night in the dorms. There’s a bit of deer-in-the-headlights in there, but there’s some defiance too. Rather than skim the reading for hints, they continued to stare…