Al Gore and 900 Others in Virtual Conversation : Technology: The vice president demonstrates communications to come. A magazine and an on-line service sponsored the ‘meeting.’

The Time: 5 p.m. EST.

The Place: Cyberspace.

The Scene: Nine hundred Compuserve subscribers, from Los Angeles to London, logged on by computer to an electronic conference room, awaiting the virtual presence of Vice President Al Gore, who is sitting at his own Compaq Pro Linea 4/33 in the White House.

A sample of the on-screen dialogue:

CAN ANYBODY SEE THIS?

Is this gonna be on C-SPAN?

it is

how many are on?

a jungle

CAN ANYBODY TELL ME HOW TO SEE WHAT I’M SENDING?

Tell the government to leave us alone as much as possible

Please kill the (capital letters) . . . It’s considered to be shouting and impolite.

We want AL! We want AL! We want AL!

Is Rush (Limbaugh) really here?

(U.S. News & World Report moderator Bill Allman:) Welcome, Mr. Vice President

(Vice President Gore:) Welcome to the White House. Let’s get started.

*

Gore, the man responsible for the phrase information superhighway , answered questions on the subject Thursday in one of the largest chat sessions ever held in an on-line forum.

The vice president seemed intent on a conscientious performance as the Clinton Administration’s point person on the information revolution. He was fresh from an appearance Tuesday at a highly publicized “superhighway summit” in Los Angeles, where he outlined the Administration’s plans for regulating the industries that will build the info highway.

On Thursday, at the U.S. News & World Report forum, Gore impressed his audience with, among other things, his typing. (“He types and spells better than most on-line types,” someone commented afterward.) Several participants expressed satisfaction with his answers to questions such as, “Would you establish a single-source repository for all environmental data DNA lab analyses?” (He said he will raise the idea with his “weekly environment idea group.”)

As you might expect, there were glitches. The slowness of typed exchanges frustrated several cyberspace citizens who could not get their questions answered. And line noise led to the following exchange between Gore and Aaron Dickey of Huntington, W.Va.:

Dickey: Are you at all worried that eventually we ALL may end up spending too much time iba*iuXEytoo (line snoise sorry) on the Net, and not enough time in face-to-face conversations/socialization?

Gore: Yes. But it’s better than the same amount of time . . .

Dickey: Line noise was my father picking up an extension, Mr. VP, sorry grin

Gore: . . . in front of a non-interactive . . .

Dickey: No sir, it was my father, not your fault.

Gore: . . . screen. Plus . . .

Most agreed that it was at best a crude prototype of the enhanced communication the information superhighway ought to eventually bring.

“Is anybody else realizing that the novelty of the experience severely outweighed its actual informative or usefulness?” asked one participant.

Still, there were calls for future forums. Limbaugh, who has a Compuserve account and was rumored to be “present,” was a favorite candidate. President Clinton was a distant second.

Times staff writer Mark Bousian in Washington contributed to this report.