It's been months since John McCain first caught flak for calling himself a computer "illiterate" in an interview given this January. But while McCain's personal comfort with technology wouldn't seem to rank up there in importance with the other issues of the day, the subject has refused to disappear, popping up most recently in an attack ad from Barack Obama's campaign and in news coverage of a McCain adviser's claim that his candidate had invented the BlackBerry.

Now, with the first of three presidential debates days away, the stage is set for the issue to resurface yet again as the candidates tussle over the problems facing the high-tech financial sector and the larger global economy. Both candidates will be under pressure to show not only that they grasp the 21st-century challenges that will come their way, but that they're in touch with the daily realities of ordinary Americans. For a good many voters, that may mean having a working knowledge of computers and the Web.

"I think it's a valid question," said Susan Mills, executive producer of a forthcoming "NewsHour" documentary about the presidential forums. "But I would see it coming up in the town hall meeting more than the other two." In that debate, the candidates' second, they will field questions from audience members as well as from visitors to MyDebates.org, a partnership between the Commission on Presidential Debates and the social networking site MySpace.

Read Kevin Friedl's full article here.