Really Artificial or Artificially Real?

In this Letter from the Editor, EIC Fei-Yue Wang reminisces about his recent trip to China for the Chinese New Year. His experience of fireworks exploding around him during the celebration caused him to reflect on a new dimension concerning real vs. virtual—actual vs. artificial—and gave him cause to reconsider his own research on the Web and social computing. Is it really artificial or artificially real?