When “New Labour” came to power in 1997, the world wide web as a public service had only been available for six years; the collective madness that became the dotcome crash had yet to come; and neither iPod, iPhone, iPad, nor social networking had even been invented. Steve Job’s recent claim that Apple has become the world’s favourite mobile computing company would have seemed bizarre.

Since 1997, technology has levelled pitches, while moving goalposts in an unprecedented fashion. So what can we expect from the new government?

The Labour Party manifesto promised access top broadband with speeds of 2 megabits per second for 90% of the country by 2017, supported by a tax on telephone lines; the creation of a government application store; and greater departmental use of cloud computing.

The Conservatives also promised superfast broadband for most of the population, as well as a government app store, and a spending limit on IT projects “to encourage smaller companies to get involved”.

The Liberal Democrats offered to expand a broadband provision through a “national infrastructure bank”, and to support the creative economy – in other words, to exploit the UK’s expertise in video games and overhaul copyright law.

In fact, a Digital Economy Bill has already been passed in the last days of the outgoing Parliament – with indecent haste, some would argue, for a measure so critical to the UK’s digital future.

Elected representatives will have to consider more carefully in future the view of citizens. They are now more able to make their voices heard online. In the era of MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and their successes, interactivity is hugely important and any government ignores its benefits and risks at its peril.