Somebody thought of it, and someone believed it. And look what it's done so far.
AstroTurf. A great invention.
Did you know that the first fake grass was patented in 1964 by Donald L. Elbert and that he originally called it ChemGrass? No? ChemGrass. Not the most inspiring name.
Lucky for ChemGrass, two years later, having tried and failed to cultivate real grass in their indoor stadium, The Houston Astros, a major league baseball team, decided to give ChemGrass a go.
And then everyone wanted in on this great new product and it was renamed Astroturf by a Monsanto employee, John A. Wortmann.
AstroTurf has gone from strength to strength as ground cover and and has now morphed into a political and business verb where a group will attempt to create an artificial movement to sway political opinion on a topic by making people think that everyone - even ordinary people - are behind a movement.
Facebook and other social media platforms have helped astroturfers enormously.
The US Government hired a software company in 2011 to create special astroturfing software to sway public opinion about various topics that weren't getting much credence on their own.
I'm just happy that my backyard looks tidier and is greener than ever before.
No comments:
Post a Comment