The first BlackBerry president is here

President Barack Hussein Obama, as he will be tomorrow, has changed everything about America already - not just by being what he is but by being who he is. He is not just the first black president. He is the first BlackBerry president.

When George W. Bush hit the campaign trail in 2000, the precious possession he brought with him from home was his feather pillow. The theme of the Bush years was obliviousness. The outgoing President was famously unavailable for debate. He was deaf to countervailing voices. He hit the sack early and always got a good night's sleep.

What the pillow was to Mr Bush the BlackBerry is to Mr Obama. Mr Bush couldn't wait to turn in; Mr Obama can't bear to tune out. It's richly symbolic that Mr Obama has been resisting the security agencies' attempts to pry his fingers from around his beloved electronic device. His fight to keep his BlackBerry shows how strongly he doesn't want to be cut off. He wants to stay in touch with the advisers and friends who can bypass the gatekeepers. (C u meet me at the g8 fr coffee 2nite?)

But Mr Obama was not just ahead of the curve in the way he understood the web. He was also the harbinger of a societal shift that is being played out before our eyes in the economic meltdown. He understood instinctively that the old structures - in his case, the structures of politics - had to be broken down and reassembled if we are to compete in the new world.

The same will prove true of business. The election delivered a seismic shock not just to the political world but to the suits at the top of Fortune 500 corporations. Call it the Obama effect - a sudden hunger for creativity and innovation, a recognition that we have to be less massive and more nimble. It came too late for some, of course, as almost simultaneously we saw the sclerotic auto companies collapsing before us. The mantra of the next decade will be more consensual, less top-down, more cellular, less gigantic. By the end of this new presidential era every CEO who boasts that he has no time to use the internet will be gone.

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