Clifford Stoll’s TED talk may not work for everyone. There’s a hippy daftness that may sometimes feel forced and a self-dismissive “what I do so is so boring” that may feel condescending, but about six minutes in he is charming, oddly moving, human, and clever. There’s also some cool stuff in there, like klein bottles, a grade school experiment to measure the speed of sound, a tribute to Moog, and a pervasive Richard Feynman tinkerer-thinker mode. He constantly grounds himself in tinkering that leads to bigger ideas.
He also has a line that sits in nice contrast to my current reading of The Craftsman and pre-occupation with expertise:
The first time you do something it’s science.
The second time it’s engineering.
The third time, you’re a technician.
He was saying this in reference to his boredom with hacking and computer security. (He first came to prominence with a fun, witty, popular computer science of his detection and catching of East German hackers in Cuckoo’s Nest, a book I still remember with a smile 15 years after reading it.)
On the other hand, he seems to have been making Klein bottles for many years and is still getting something out of it.
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I’m a little disappointed in myself for not knowing Klein bottles. Wikipedia has several pop culture references listed that make me think I should have known it: Futurama has Klein beer sold in Klein bottles, and Magic has an Elkin bottle card.
Maybe it’s not my fault It’s just something damn hippies seem to do:
[...] A nice contrast to Clifford Stoll’s aversion to going deep, is a Freakonomics blog piece about, god help me, sports. The piece is about “expert performance” (no Wikipedia entry!) and the related concept of “deliberate practice” (still no Wikipedia entry!). From the blog post: [...]