It's not just elections, but governing that will never be the same in America. Consider an e-mail I just received, addressed to Don, from David. That's David Plouffe, Barack Obama's campaign manager. "The inauguration is just 62 days away, and as President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden prepare to take office, they'll need your support more than ever," it said.
Until now, the game of politics was played this way: You, the citizen, listen to speeches, debates and television ads. You give money. You vote. But when it's time to govern, you are supposed to sit quietly while the real powers - the politicians, their financial supporters, and the lobbyists - make all the decisions, often according to their own interests.
But young people who have grown up digital - the same kids who helped give Barack Obama his mandate - won't settle for the old rules, and Mr. Obama knows it.
He's mobilizing the millions of young people who supported his presidential campaign to help him as he prepares to take the helm of a troubled country. It's an audacious move to change the act of governing, and he's taking a massive risk. If circumstances force him to renege on his promises, get ready for some spectacular clashes.
This appeal from Mr. Plouffe was e-mailed not just to me but to the estimated 10 million Americans on Mr. Obama's e-mail list. "You've built an organization in your community and across the country that will continue to work for change - whether it's by building grassroots support for legislation, backing state and local candidates, or sharing organizing techniques to effect change in your neighborhood. Your hard work built this movement. Now it's up to you to decide how we move forward."
We were all asked to fill out an online survey asking for our co-ordinates, our political leanings, our experiences during Mr. Obama's campaign, and our interest in volunteering in the near future.
This will make sense for the generation I call the Net Geners - young Americans under 30 who have grown up digital and have jumped into politics in the excitement of Mr. Obama's campaign.
Their digital upbringing conditions them to expect a two-way conversation, not a lecture. They expect to collaborate with politicians, not just listen to their grandstanding speeches. They want to be involved directly - to interact with them, contribute ideas, scrutinize their actions, work to catalyze initiatives - and not just during elections, but as they govern. And they will insist on integrity. They will know very quickly if a politician says one thing and does another.
During the campaign, they heard Mr. Obama promise to change the "you vote and we govern" style of leadership. He vowed, for instance, to shine a light on lobbying, to hold digital town hall meetings, to give citizens five days to review legislation before he signs it.
Now they're set to shake up both politics and government. They're not calling for some kind of direct democracy, where citizens can vote every night on the evening news or websites. That would be tantamount to a digital mob. Rather, they want to offer the new president insight and wisdom that he may not be able to find in Washington. This may address a glaring defect in our political system - the lack of a mechanism enabling government to benefit on an ongoing way from the knowledge a nation can collectively offer. The answer may come in the Net Generation's collaborative and interactive way of doing things - a model deployed so effectively in Mr. Obama's primary campaign.
They've already set up sites to make government more transparent. Sites such as PoliticalBase.com and OpenCongress.org provide platforms for citizens who want to track their representatives. "We want to make it much easier for people to understand the web of political connections - not only who did John Kerry vote for, but who contributed to his campaign and what were his stances on various issues," says PoliticalBase co-founder Mike Tatum. Meanwhile, groups like Sunlight Labs and IBM's alphaWorks are taking advantage of new visualization technologies to help non-experts gain access to and understand publicly available data that highlights government spending, political contributions and the possible connections between the two.
These hyper-connected activists will want to participate in government after the election, but if they are disappointed, watch out: They have the means to make their views known in new and effective ways. They have great expectations for Mr. Obama, especially since he has promised greater transparency in government. The new president may find he has a tiger by the tail.
Don Tapscott is the author of Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World .
Don Tapscott