Clifford Stoll is a nutty guy. In a good way. In fact, when I first saw this talk, I blogged that I wanted to be more like him as I get older. Ultimately Clifford’s message is about culture and education. Sure, he’s a scientist, but his rampant curiosity and hands-on thinking makes me consider him more of a hacker. Never mind that he wrote that article in 1995 that basically said Amazon and Wikipedia could never exist — I mean, he was wrong, but perhaps the point behind it is worth the extreme stand on technology.
You can’t really expect a guy that says he “thinks locally and acts locally” to get the bigger picture, but what he does do at a personal level with kids and other curious folk I think is very special.
