Early life

John Naughton was born and raised in Ireland, that part of which he himself describes as being “like the edge of the world—in a remote part of rural Ireland, in a household with few books, magazines, or television.”

Radio days

As a boy, John Naughton was a great wireless fan, especially of short wave. For longwave wireless he remembers that the stations were identified by the physical locations of their transmitters: ‘Droitwich’, ‘Hilversum’, ‘Luxembourg’ and ‘Athlone’ Other stations on the long-wave band that he remembered were: Minsk, Kalundbourg, Ankara and Brasov

Medium wave radio pointed to another collection of locations with "glamorous connotations": Bordeaux, Stockholm, Rennes, Vienna and somewhere called Mühlacker

Of all the things that interested him about the wireless-technology of the time it was the short wave radio that held the key to what he later recognized was a link to the present World Wide Web:

“For this [short-wave radio] was a technology which belonged not to great corporations or governments, but to people.”

For Naughton, the early days of radio mirror and inform the experience of the early days of the Internet (the Net) and the World Wide Web.

In 1968 he moved to the United Kingdom.

Education

Naughton went to primary school with the Christian Brothers and with the Jesuits Later, he studied at the University College Cork and the Emmanuel College in Cambridge As an undergraduate he became involved with student politics, and as a consequence started to write for newspapers and developed his writing skills. He is an electrical engineer and also works as a journalist.

Academia

Naughton started working as an academic in the Open University's systems workgroup in 1972. He was appointed as a professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the Open University in 2006.

Other Occupations

John Naughton is Director of the Wolfson College, Cambridge Press Fellowship Programme, non-executive Chairman of RAB-eye and of Ndiyo. He is also a founding partner of Ellipsian, a Cambridge-based ideas factory.

Personal life

John Naughton met his Wife Sue in England while working together on a project of the Open University. They had three children, named Annie, Thomas and Peter. Tragically, his wife Sue died in 2002 after a battle with cancer.

Publications

Naughton wrote a book which has become a standard on the history on the Internet:

• A Brief History of the Future: Origins of the Internet, Phoenix Press, 2000, ISBN 0-7538-1093-X

He also writes a weekly column for the Business Section of The Observer.

Notes

References

External links

• Homepage at the Open University
• Inaugural Lecture
• Open University Systems Department Website ***Page Not Found*** 2008-09-08
• John Naughton's Online Diary