John Naughton

John is co-founder of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy.

By background a systems engineer, he is an academic and a newspaper columnist whose interests lie in the societal impact of digital technology.  He is Emeritus Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the Open University, Director of the Wolfson Press Fellowship Programme and the Technology columnist of the *Observer*.

At CRASSH, he was co-director (with Sir Richard Evans and Professor David Runciman) of a five-year Leverhulme-funded research project on Conspiracy and Democracy (2013–2018) and with David Runciman ran a two-year (2014–2016) research project on Technology and Democracy. He has written extensively on technology and its role in society, and is the author of a well-known history of the Internet — ‘A Brief History of the Future’ (Phoenix, 2000). His most recent book, ‘From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: what you really need to know about the Internet’, is published by Quercus.