MATT HARTLEY writes:

Not since former vice-president Al Gore “invented” the Internet has technology been as hot a talking point in the corridors of power in Washington.

President-elect Barack Obama has raised it to a new level, to the point where aides say he wants to become the first American President to have a laptop computer on his desk in the Oval Office.

He also wants to be the first president to have a national tech czar.

In addition to his BlackBerry addiction, the Facebook groups and iPhone application that helped him get elected and his decision to broadcast the weekly presidential radio addresses on YouTube, Mr. Obama has pledged to make issues of net neutrality, copyright protection, online privacy and cybersecurity hallmarks of his presidency.

The question is, who's going to handle that file?

Wall Street wants to know who's taking over as Treasury Secretary and other prestige posts in an Obama administration, but the tech community is abuzz over who will get the nod for a new cabinet-level post of chief technology officer.

Some say Mr. Obama will choose an academic with a background in Internet and technology policy issues, such as Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig – who founded the school's Center for Internet and Society – or Edward Felten, director of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University.

Others believe Mr. Obama will draw from the corporate community to demonstrate his commitment to funding green technology research, computer science education and high-tech job creation programs.

Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt and Xerox Corp. CEO Anne Mulcahy are both on the president-elect's transition team, but neither are likely to want to the post. Observers say Google “Chief Internet Evangelist” Vinton Cerf – known in some circles as the “father of the Internet” – and John Doerr, a long-time Silicon Valley venture capitalist who is good friends with Apple Inc. boss Steve Jobs, are more likely choices.

“He wants to be the Internet president,” said Tom Keenan, a University of Calgary professor who teaches computer science and environmental design.

“He understands that technology will play a big role in how he gets the job done. Clearly he doesn't need a lot of education about technology, he gets it right away.”

Although the United States remains home to many of the world's top cutting-edge technology companies, the U.S. government and the politicians who walk the halls of power in Washington are often accused of being behind the times when it comes to technology issues.

One of the first challenges facing the incoming CTO will be to find ways to use technology to improve communication between branches of the federal government, while at the same time making the federal government more transparent for citizens.

Many experts point to the failures surrounding hurricane Katrina to illustrate how the most technologically advanced nation on the planet can't get its governmental departments to communicate properly. “They're recognizing the importance of technology, not only in government, but in the economy and in people's everyday lives,” said Mr. Felten, who teaches computer science at Princeton.

Mr. Obama's tech pedigree stands in stark contrast to his opponents, such as Senator John McCain, who was derided by bloggers and tech experts during the presidential election campaign for his admission that he didn't know how to operate a computer, while former Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens has become an infamous Web legend for once describing the Internet as a “series of tubes.”

The new administration has laid out three technology policy directions that will likely fall to the CTO, which include protecting the openness of the Internet, investing in science education and research to improve the competitiveness of American workers, and increased broadband Internet penetration, according to Mr. Obama's official website.

Still, whoever takes over as tech czar will have his or her plate full from the outset.

Student enrolment in post-secondary computer science programs is on the wane in North America and the debate over so-called net neutrality – the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally – is heating up as the tech community lashes out at Internet service providers who have begun prioritizing certain traffic on their networks.

The CTO would also likely play a role in the U.S. government's involvement in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), an international treaty under construction by a number of nations, including Canada, that would enact strict enforcement rules surrounding intellectual property and copyright matters. The Electronic Frontier Foundation in the U.S. and several other legal groups have already publicly condemned the ACTA.

THE FIRST ‘NERD' PRESIDENT

Barack Obama was the Internet's first choice for president even before the polls opened on Nov. 4, and now the blogosphere is heralding the ascendancy of the first “nerd” commander-in-chief.

Indeed, lending credence to that assertion, while out on the campaign trail Mr. Obama ran into Leonard Nimoy – best known as Spock from the Star Trek television series – and greeted him with the four-fingered Vulcan greeting from the show.

By the time his campaign wrapped up, Mr. Obama had more than three million friends on Facebook and more than 975,000 on MySpace. Since his election, he has become one of the hottest trends on the Web.

A free video game called Super Obama World available at superobamaworld.com – a knockoff of the Super Nintendo game Super Mario World – features a Mario-like character of the president-elect jumping on the heads of pigs wearing lipstick while collecting American flag lapel pins.

Jumping on the head of a Sarah Palin aide with a rack of clothes nets the player 150,000 points.

There's even a website – barackyourself.org – that allows users to paste their faces onto the president-elect's body, which is about as creepy as it sounds.