The virtual idol isn't likely to have a tantrum or complain about your percentage, either

What's cute, 5ft 4in tall, has blood type A, and likes Snowdrop flowers and Christian Slater? Why, software, of course.

Unusual software. Quite different from, say, a copy of Microsoft Word.

On the one hand, she's 17 years old, and her sign is Scorpio. She sings, likes the film Toy Story, works part-time in her parents' fast food restaurant and worries about her waistline. Her name is Kyoko Date (pronounced dah- tey).

On the other hand, "her" code name is DK-96, and "she" consists of 40,000 polygons rendered into still and animated 3D images by state-of-the-art computer graphics. "She" took 18 months to create: her face alone required a team of 10 programmers to model.

Kyoko Date is a computer-generated teen idol, commissioned by a Japanese talent agency, Horipro, that produces aidoru kashu ("teen idols"). Virtual Kyoko has a CD, Love Communication, on the charts in Japan. She's a hit with pubescent boys, who can chat with her via her Web page. She's a hit with pubescent girls who want to look like her so they can chat with the boys, too - not necessarily on a Web page.

She has fan clubs. She's been in music magazines and Wired magazine. Admirers around the world have set up Web pages with pictures, video clips and interviews in adulation.

"She" is not alone. There are other virtual people out there. Take Digital Reiko, another popular Japanese singer. Reiko is available to any fan via two online chat services. She has a Web page, and her image can be delivered anywhere instantaneously via digital special effects.

But Reiko isn't software. She's a 19-year-old Tokyo resident who spends hours every day online with fans, and lives in an apartment painted chroma- key blue so her image can be delivered instantly into any required video background.

What is going on here, one wonders? What may be going on is the perfection of a basic industrial process. Henry Ford's efficient assembly lines changed the world by making his cars cheap enough that any working person could afford one.

Japan, Inc, is changing the world by perfecting the information assembly line. The trick to selling pure information like Kyoko is the money part. Somewhere you have to convert the ephemeral into the bankable.

So how do you get from "look and feel" to "dollars, pounds and yen"?

Digital guru and experienced Japanese cultural observer Howard Rheingold sizes it up best. From his Web page: "In Japan, magazines are based on idols - fashion manufacturers follow the idols' wardrobe, retail shops distribute the latest idol trend gear, television and radio kick in with constant electronic reiteration, creating detailed public personae for millions of adolescent girls - the economic hamsters in the ever-spinning cage of the media-fashion-entertainment complex. Until now, this has been a top-down phenomenon, fine-tuned by the `star-making machinery' that originated in Hollywood and was perfected in Tokyo."

Virtual people also solve another problem for the idol makers. A real "idol" with all the requisite talent and charm doesn't come along nearly often enough to keep the hamster cages spinning at full tilt. There's also the problem that the next idol might walk into the competition's studio first. Your agency might have even thrown out the budding Elvis or Madonna after a bad audition.

But, you can custom-tailor virtual talent at will to today's tastes. The virtual idol isn't likely to have a tantrum or complain about your percentage, either.

Speaking of money, none of this is lost on Hollywood, which has been at this game for more than half a century. Animated movie stars have been around almost since the technology of moving pictures would allow, and companies like Disney are no slouches at merchandising their creations.

Disney and the other old-line studios know the other advantage of virtual stars: you hire their voices and other "talents" on a job basis, which keeps the price down. Kyoko's voice is a real singer's. Her video animation is modelled on the movements of a human dancer, and a radio actress handles her "live" interviews.

And, presumably, just as soon as Kyoko gets a little dated, the agency can sack the human talent, remake the digital persona, and get back on the charts. Kyoko's press releases allude to a 15-year-old "younger sister".

The human talent won't be any happier than their throwaway counterparts on Ford's assembly lines, but this is business, darlings. The show must go on.

There's millions of 13-year-olds out there: they can get very stroppy if you don't deliver their idols. And you can get very rich, if you do. It's a virtual certainty

cg@gulker.com