John Naughton
Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology
Email: j.j.naughton@open.ac.uk
Brief biography
I've been an academic in the Systems Group since 1972 and am now Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology. (For an MP3 of my Inaugural Lecture, see here. PDF version here.) I came to the OU from Cambridge University and promised myself I would leave when I got bored. I'm an electrical engineer with an interest in complex systems and the use of computers and networks in teaching and learning. In my time I've contributed to most of the Systems courses, and devoted more years of my life than I care to admit to Foundation-level teaching of technological ideas. With Nigel Cross of the Faculty's Design Group I was the co-designer of Living with Technology -- the Technology Foundation course which ran from 1980 to 1996, and I was the Production Chairman of that course for a long spell. A few years ago I started the 'Going Digital' project to act as an incubator of innovative online courses on digital technologies (it morphed into the Relevant Knowledge Programme) and was one of the small team which produced You, your computer and the Net -- the University's first large-population online course which attracted 12,000 students in its first year.
Current teaching responsibilities
I'm the Director of Relevant Knowledge, the Faculty's Short Course Programme. Our latest courses are Beyond Google: working with information online and we have a very popular course on digital photography. I've also written a block (about networks) for the new Systems second-level course, T214 - Understanding systems: Making sense of complexity.
Research
My main interests are: (i) understanding the history, evolution and behaviour of complex technological systems (particularly the Internet); (ii) the relationships between technology and society and (iii) the role of ICT in teaching and learning. Some years ago I published what has become a standard history of the Internet.
Interests outside the OU
Many and varied. I was for years Chairman of One World International, the company which operated OneWorld.Net, at one time the world's largest civil-society Web portal. I co-founded Living Without Microsoft, an information hub about alternatives to Microsoft software. I write a weekly column about the Internet for the London Observer newspaper. I'm Director of the Press Fellowship Programme at Wolfson College, Cambridge. I also supervise graduate students doing Internet-related Masters and PhD research at the Cambridge Centre for International Studies. Between October 2003 and December 2005 I was Director of the Ndiyo Project, a radical Cambridge-based non-profit enterprise which aims to make networked computing affordable by poor people, especially in the underdeveloped world. I'm now Ndiyo's non-exec Chairman. The technology developed as a result of the Ndiyo initiative is now coming to market. I was a member of the group which drafted the Royal Society of Arts Adelphi Charter. I've been a keen photographer since I was a teenager. And I keep an online diary (aka weblog, aka Blog).
Favourite Websites
Arts and Letters Daily, Slashdot, John Brockman's Edge site, BoingBoing and my my del.icio.us bookmarks. See also the Blogroll on my blog.
For more info see...
My personal web site and my blog.