Ballina internet academic honoured by UCC

Ballina internet academic honoured by UCC


Edwin McGreal

A Ballina man who is a leading authority on the internet will receive a coveted award from University College Cork.
Professor John Naughton will receive an Alumni Achievement Award from UCC this Friday, the highest honour UCC can bestow on a graduate.
Professor Naughton has written extensively on technology and its role in society. His book ‘A Brief History of the Future: The origins of the Internet’, has become a staple of university reading lists across the globe. He is a prominent media commentator and graduated from UCC with a degree in Engineering in 1968.
John Naughton is Vice President, Wolfson College Cambridge and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts Social Sciences and Humanities at Cambridge, where he is Principal Investigator on a five-year research project on Conspiracy and Democracy funded by the Leverhulme Trust. Naughton is also Emeritus Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the Open University and has been an Adjunct Professor at UCC since 2011.
Naughton joined the Open University as a lecturer in Systems in 1972 and pioneered the use of computers and the internet in teaching and learning throughout the 1980s and the 1990s.
He developed a strong interest in the social impacts of networking technology and was appointed Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the Open University in 2002. His most recent book is titled ‘From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: What you really need to know about the Internet’.
Each of the five award recipients will receive an ‘acorn to mighty oak’ sterling silver trophy, designed by Don O’Mahony, an engraver and jeweller in Cork.
The 2014 UCC Alumni Achievement Awards and Gala Black-Tie Dinner will be held this Friday in the Aula Maxima, UCC.