The “Great tradition” that Lessing alludes to poses another problem. Cyber-writers should not be expected to have memorized Pride and Prejudice— or the latest developments in string theory—but writing skills do seem to be lacking. Techspeak may suffice in many environments, but engineers and technologists, at least ones who want to write something that will interest on-line readers, could do with a few months reviewing some prose-models.

CP Snow wrote on this topic decades ago in his “Two Cultures” essay. He lamented the gap between the literary and scientific camps. Thomas Pynchon–someone who has bridged that gap at least to some extent–agrees with Snow, in part (his essay on CP Snow and “Luddites” is online). Snow’s Two Culture’s thesis remains an issue in many academic contexts: the literary and political people often detest techies, call them reductionists or cold, robotic, etc., while the scientists and engineers predictably view the lit. or political types as irrational, emotional, given to great generalizations, etc. Logic itself is sort of a dirty word among many leftist literary people. Yet as a Pynchon (or CP Snow, or Bertrand Russell, SJ Gould to some extent) indicates one can bridge the gap, at least with some work: mastering compound nouns in German, or finishing Ulysses, may pose nearly as many difficulties as multivariate calculus.

That said, Americans as a rule generally lack language skills, even in English. Most bright european students (and citizens) well know their Mutterzunge and then French, latin, English in addition to that (and in addition to the math/science curriculum). Few Americans will master a second language (and it is not such a trivial task); perusing the colloquial barks and bleats of political sites and blogs, one wonders whether they have mastered a five-paragraph essay with a clearly-defined thesis.