Well the election has been decided today, and who won? I can say technology has certainly been shown to be a winner.

First, Barack Obama showed how politicians can use the internet and e-mail to get out volunteers to encourage people to vote and also to raise record amounts of campaign money.

He also went beyond the robot telephone calls. He harnessed the cell phone, not only to keep that corps of volunteers informed about his policies and who next to call, but also to transmit his messages to the undecided.

Both candidates used social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, blogs and e-mail to campaign. Obama, or whoever was behind his campaign, went one step further by developing an iPhone application to help volunteers sort out their contacts, and track whether they were called or not. He also developed advertising for use on cell phones.

And of course, there is actually a site that tracks how the candidates have used technology. At Techpresident.com you can see that Obama's Facebook page has 2.4 million supporters compared to John McCain's 623,000. By late yesterday the publication was speculating about what would happen to the Obama network if he becomes the next US president.

With an average of four thousand political operatives in each Congressional district, would he keep the network active as part of an apparatus to support his policy objectives? It is a legitimate question. The Obamanet might become the next-generation political network, if it is not already.

In addition to the political use of technology, the media also leveraged some high-powered tools to bore down into the stats. Over the past few months TV viewers have become used to the huge touch screen used by CNN and others to pull stats out of a screen.

On Monday, CNN reporter John King demonstrated his adeptness with the 'magic board', pulling up stats and then zooming into areas of the US, down to satellite maps, to show factors that might affect the vote. Just go to the 'Backstory' section on CNN.com to see the video of the demonstration.

You probably saw enough of it last night if you watched CNN, so might be sick of it by now. Of course, we must remember the Marshall McLuhan phrase, 'The medium is the message', which he used to capture how technology influences how the media or the reporting is perceived. By reflection, the medium also influences how the message was reported, and this became 'The medium is the massage'.

In a wider sense, how technology influences our behaviour can be seen in last week's Agence France-Presse's story about the Polish lorry driver who ended up in a lake due to his trust in his GPS navigator. The story is illustrative because it highlights some people's blind trust in technology - to the exclusion of their brain.

The man, who was driving near the town of Glubczyce in Poland, put his minivan into a lake after following directions from his GPS navigator.

The road had been closed for about a year and the area flooded to make an artificial lake for a water reservoir. According to local police the driver ignored three road signs warning him it was a dead end.

Since his GPS told him to drive straight ahead, he did and ended up driving his minivan into the lake, along with his two passengers. Police rescued them, with only their egos bruised.

However the incident could have ended in tragedy. After searching the Internet, I found other stories caused by drivers blindly following GPS guidance devices. Some have mistakenly turned the wrong way into one-way streets. A driver in Mexico nearly drove off a cliff.

The BBC, reporting on residents of a small Welsh town whose houses were damaged due to large trucks following navigation directions, calls the phenomena "GPS blindness".

I suppose the mechanical voice perhaps lulls one into a sense of automated response. Still, on the positive side using GPS has probably saved a few accidents. Instead of looking at a map or trying to read signs while trying to drive, drivers are probably less distracted and less likely to make a mistake while listening to that voice...listening to that voice...listening to that voice.

If you have any comments send them to Ahmed at elamin.ahmed@gmail.com.