Clifford Stoll

Clifford Stoll (or Cliff Stoll) is a U.S. astronomer, computer expert, and author. He received his Ph.D. from University of Arizona in 1980. During the 1960s and '70s, Stoll was assistant chief engineer at WBFO, a public radio station in Buffalo, New York.

Stoll has written three books as well as technology articles in the non-specialist press (e.g., in Scientific American on the Curta mechanical calculator).

Stoll's role in catching hacker Markus Hess in the 1980s, while Stoll was employed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, led to his authoring the book The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage and the authoring of the paper "Stalking the Wily Hacker", published at the professional journal Communications of the ACM . Stoll's book was later chronicled in an episode of WGBH's NOVA entitled "The KGB, the Computer, and Me" which aired on PBS stations in 1990.

In his 1995 book, Silicon Snake Oil, Stoll raised questions about the influence of the Internet on future society and whether it would be beneficial. Along the way, he makes various predictions, calling e-commerce unviable due to a lack of personal contact.

Stoll is fascinated by one-sided objects and currently sells blown glass Klein bottles on the Web. He is currently a "mostly" stay-at-home dad. He teaches eighth graders about physics at Tehiyah Day School, in El Cerrito, California. Stoll was a regular contributor to MSNBC's The Site. Stoll is an FCC licensed amateur radio operator, callsign K7TA

Notes and References

• High-Tech Heretic: Reflections of a Computer Contrarian, Clifford Stoll, 2000, ISBN 0-385-48976-5.

External links

• Web page at Berkeley
• Stalking the Wily Hacker copy at Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Klein bottles by Cliff Stoll
• 1995 Newsweek article where he downplays the internet and social networks
• Picture of Stoll from an interview with by Pro-Linux Magazine
• 2004 audio interview with Clifford Stoll by Karen Saupe
• 2006 article in Scientific American, "When the Slide Rules Ruled"
• Talk by Cliff Stoll April 4, 1996
• Talk at TED Feb 2006