I have this software-developer friend, X (not his real name), who doesn't program in C, isn't on the Internet, and has no social-security number. No, he's not imaginary. But he's working on it. X is swimming against the current. The trend is for everybody to become better known. In the future, Andy Warhol once said, everybody will be famous for 15 minutes. Well, it's the future, and some of you may be asking, "Is it my turn yet?" Then again, you may be asking, "Who's Andy Warhol?" If so, I'm saying, "He was a friend of Lou Reed's who lives on today as a demographic profile in various marketing databases, as shall we all when our numbers are up."
I, of course, am famous, but perhaps because I am childless, I sometimes worry about the impermanence of the impression I will leave behind when my number is up. Will the subject matter of these columns lose some of its fascination over the next thousand years? Is DDJ using acid-free paper? Who has custody of Nixon's enemies list? On the other hand, I don't have to watch Barney, so maybe it's a wash.
I worry about other things, like how you reduce crime by making more things illegal and whether software agents keep 15 percent of the information they process, but mostly these days I worry about being too wired.
Wired magazine, and it should know, calls the talking half of Penn and Teller the most wired person in America, which is interesting given that Penn isn't even on the Internet. What they mean, I think, is that he's a celebrity who knows something about computers.
A celebrity, as somebody said, is somebody well-known for their well-known-ness. There's probably a fine irony in the fact that I've forgotten who said that.
But it should be no surprise that Penn knows something about computers. Magician is the second geekiest entertainment profession, right behind ventriloquist. If you think back to high-school talent shows, you'll see that I'm right.
Hey, I don't like perpetuating this insulting popular image of the thin, bespectacled, squeaky-voiced, self-absorbed, boring technoweenie geek, but you know and I know that the stereotype is going to be with us until Bill Gates's number is up, and there's not a darned thing we can do about it.
Penn can't be called a geek anymore, though, because he has hired someone to geek for him. "Personal Geek" has become a profession, soon to get its own section in the classifieds in Variety. Celebrities and politicians, used to getting fit by hiring personal trainers, are now getting wired by hiring personal geeks.
But, while my inside line to the celebrity scene has dried up since cousin Frack retired from the Ice Follies, I wonder if even celebrities and politicians might not regret getting too wired. Getting wired can make you a little too well-known. It's hard to recall a persona launched into cyberspace. Richard Nixon didn't want to be immortalized as the villain in The Haldeman Diaries: The CD, and I don't want to be immortalized as a demographic profile in various marketing databases.
There is something to be said for being more Teller than Penn.
editor-at-large
Copyright © 1994, Dr. Dobb's Journal