In addition to
sid's excellent writeup, I'd like to add that Penn has made a sincere attempt to involve himself in the
computing community in a variety of ways, including sleazing around on
The Jungle (his personal dialup
BBS), working on an odd project or two at the
MIT Media Lab, and writing a back page column for
PC Computing magazine, among other things. He mentioned in his
.plan once that his intention was to learn something other than show business so he wouldn't end up like some "
bush league Chevy Chase".
Penn latched onto computers in the late 1980s, so by the time
Wired magazine wrote an article about him in April 1994, he already seemed like a fixture on the scene, and with a fairly impressive
rolodex as well. He had a
finger-able
UNIX account at
media.mit.edu, access to
politicians on technology policy issues, and was rarely seen without the newest, flashiest
laptop available.
Don't get me wrong; it's not like Penn cranks out
C++ code (at least not as far as I know), but it's somewhat refreshing to see that he cares about something other than screaming into a
cell phone and surrounding himself with
yes men.