An interesting article appeared in O'Reilly's “Tech Trends” newsletter this month.
Want your own Klein jar?Created by Cliff Stoll, author of cybersecurity classics cuckoo eggwho will sign your bottle (and may include other surprises).
First described by mathematician Felix Klein in 1882, the Klein bottle (like a Möbius strip) is one-sided. (Mr. Stoll's website has a question: “Do you want a bottle with zero capacity…?”) “Want the ultimate non-directionality…? Mathematician handcrafted in glass It is the joy of
but how The legendary cyber breach detective's founding of the company is described in a 2016 article in the University of California, Berkeley's alumni magazine. What's that headline? “How a Berkeley Weird Beats the Russians and Creates a Wonderful, Useless Object”
What is the reward for his cloak and dagger magic? A letter of appreciation from the CIA hidden somewhere in the attic… Stoll has published a best-selling book, cuckoo egg, about his research. PBS followed this up with a NOVA episode titled “The KGB, the Computer, and Me.” In this documentary drama, Stoll appears as himself and also serves as the narrator, breaking through the “fourth wall.” As the burgeoning technology industry buzzed with praise, Stoll also broke through another barrier and stepped into the realm of untold fame…more famous than he could have ever dreamed of, but he I hated it. “After a few months, you realize how flimsy and shallow the fame is. I'm an astronomer, not a software jockey. But what people were interested in was my computer. It was just ing.”
Stoll's disillusionment also arose from what he perceived as the false religion of the Internet… Stoll articulated his disillusionment in his next book. silicone snake oil, published in 1995, inspired readers to get out from behind their computer screens and get on with life. “I was asking questions that I thought were obvious: Do e-classrooms lead to improvement? Do computers help students learn? Yes, but what you can teach in an e-classroom is that when you have a question, Always go to the computer instead of relying on yourself. Suppose I were an evil person and tried to eliminate curiosity in my children, and they would soon learn the greatest thing about being human. You don't learn by looking, you learn by understanding.'' As Stoll soon learned, this was not a popular message during the rise of the dot-com era. was…
But being a voice in the wilderness doesn't pay very well. And by this time Stoll had followed his own advice and was able to earn his life. That means getting married and having two children. So he looked for ways to make money. This began his third and current career as president and head of bottle cleaning for the aforementioned Acme His Klein Bottle Company. At first, Stoll had trouble finding someone to make Klein bottles. He attempts to peddle bongs on Telegraph Avenue, but the man takes Cliff's money and disappears. “The problem for bong makers is that they realize they are also bong users.”
And in 1994, two of his friends, Tom Adams and George Chittenden, opened a shop in West Berkeley that made glassware for science labs. “They needed help with a computer program and wanted to pay me,” Stoll recalled. “I said, 'No, let's make a Klein bottle instead.' And so the Acme Klein Bottle was born.”