Meanwhile, elsewhere in America, computing experts meeting in San Francisco this week are exploring the potential for a service that might change all our lives, possibly almost as dramatically as the election of the new president. It is cloud computing. It will change how you work and play, and how much it will cost to do both.

So what is it? Essentially it divorces computing services from your computer hardware and shifts them to a server, or several servers, on the internet; somewhere in the ether. Hence the cloud. Your data is accessible from anywhere, and from any device: from your laptop, your mobile phone, an internet café or from your granny’s laptop.

Not only is it convenient — no more worrying about backing up data, or transferring files from one laptop to another — it is cheaper. Any laptop that connects to the internet will be all you need to access your work, photos, web-based mail, DVDs and music. Economies of scale and the fact that businesses will use cloud computing power as they need it (and thus also pay for it as they use it, much the same way they pay for their electricity), mean that computing will cost less.

Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, IBM and Cisco are already competing for cloud custom — though not always in ways that synchronise smoothly. Who controls your information is also an itchy issue that has to be resolved. But the hiccups are heavily outweighed by the convenience.

Cloud computing will define the next 20 years of the IT industry. Barack Obama understood well the power of the internet to galvanise voters. To win in 2012, he and his Republican rival may both be campaigning on the ground, but they will need to have their heads firmly in the clouds.