Thus virtual popcorn, provided to hundreds of real youngsters sitting around a virtual campfire during the 3rd Cyberspace International Scouting Jamboree on the Internet in February 1996. I had used the words to preface an e-mail from Senator John Glenn exhorting the scouts to use the resources of cyberspace in service to all humanity.

This event had several layers of virtual reality. My job was to write words that created Senator Glenn’s thoughts in the minds of readers -- a process not fundamentally different from using the words "pop pop pop pop" to suggest popcorn to kids sitting in front of CRTs. Furthermore, "Senator Glenn" was an entity of virtual reality created at the convergence of several systems, including John Glenn himself. Virtual Senator Glenn was larger and more focused, simpler and more complex, more ubiquitous and less accessible, and far more knowledgeable than any mere mortal could be. As a practical matter the real John Glenn working in a Senate office could not know first-hand every word prepared for his signature by staff to send to constituents in Ohio or scouts in cyberspace. Neither could he physically sign as many as 500 letters a day, so many of his signatures were generated by an autopen -- a mechanical manifestation of virtual reality. Is it really John Glenn’s signature if he wasn’t holding the pen that wrote it?

In the summer of 1994 a world soccer tournament in Chicago posed a severe problem in Iran: the satellite TV feed of the games showed women fans in shorts, sleeveless shirts and halters. This is morally unacceptable in Muslim society and the Iranian government tried to black out the games, causing a terrible outcry. The problem was solved by dubbing in shots of fans in the same arena in winter, bundled up in winter clothes. Virtual reality, or moral responsibility? Or just plain lying?

Now consider this news item, from the Record Courier, Nov. 29, 1995:

The IKV Fist of Terror Klingon Assault Group of Portage County will be assisting the American Red Cross Blood Drive at the University Mall on Dec. 23.

Although pop pop pop pop as virtual popcorn is lame, and fiddling with reality by dubbing TV images is dubious, there is considerable virtue in Trekkies leaving their cyberspace games to help with real world blood drives. Alternate realities have their uses. Indeed, humans have survived and prospered because we can imagine other realities and change our behavior to accommodate them.

This past week the Record Courier published a letter-to-the-editor beginning: "There were 39 combat-related killings in Iraq during January. In the fair city of Detroit, there were 35 murders ..." It continued with a list of "talking points" and ended with "Our commander-in-chief is doing a great job. ... The biased media hopes we are too ignorant to realize the facts."

Four days later, the RC printed a reply pointing out that the first letter had been circulating on the Internet since last year. This reply refuted most of the points of the first letter, and concluded "your bias blinds you to reality and the truth."

Then a third letter attacked the second letter-writer for not recognizing the reality of Bush’s success in Iraq and in spreading democracy in the Middle East, and flung "your bias blinds you to reality" back to the second writer.

In this interchange the first letter was clearly classic plagiarism. But in present political reality, it is primarily ‘astroturfing", as in ‘creating fake grassroots opinion’.

Astroturf is widely used by political parties and companies that generate blitzes of letters and phone calls to Congress, or set up "Citizens’ Committees" that don’t include any citizens , and partisan blogs that provide whole letters and op-eds to send to editors of newspapers to create the appearance of grassroots support.

Political movements always take advantage of existing power to gain public support for their agendas. But with the growth of electronic media and aggressive marketing techniques, the old rules about acceptable and honest uses of the media are often ignored. In addition, there is no bright line between grassroots activism and astroturfing.

This week the RC also published a letter from a man unable to work, whose wife earns only $20 more per month than the cost of their month’s supply of prescription drugs.

This month Army and Navy investigators concluded – without using the word ‘torture’ -- that the U.S. military had killed 26 prisoners of war.

Each day this week, as we heard hourly updates on efforts to restore feeding tubes to one permanently brain-damaged woman, 34,000 small children out there in the real world died of lack of food.

With our present technologies of communication and information-management we are literally knee-deep in realities – artfully framed realities, meticulously edited realities, professionally staged realities – to say nothing of faux news, fudged facts, breathless headlines and statistical fictions. Choosing plausible realities out of this tangle is hard enough without squabbling over which realities are really real, and exchanging accusations of blindness, ignorance, or malign intent.

Yet if we hope for a better world we have to try. Astroturf doesn’t support living systems. Public-spirited Klingons can’t help with the costs of prescriptions. Dubbing in Bush quotes about democracy won’t undo criminal homicide. Virtual popcorn doesn’t feed anyone.

We can do better. Really

Caroline Arnold (csarnold@neo.rr.com) served 12 years on the staff of Senator John Glenn and is now active with the Portage Democratic Coalition (http://www.pdcohio.us) and Kent Environmental Council (http://www.kentenvironment.org). This column will appear in the Kent-Ravenna Record Courier on Sunday March 27, 2005.

###