Believe it or not, there hasn’t always been an internet. We now accept it so much that it’s hard to imagine how we lived without it but until really very recent the net was something strange, the province of geeks and nerds who understood computers.

An information revolution has happened – for all but the youngest adults, within our lifetimes – and we’ve barely paid attention. Well, now you can find out where the internet came from and why it is like it is in the latest ‘Connected Worlds’ public lecture organised by our IT Services Division.

Professor John Naughton, recently retired as the Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the Open University, will speak on ‘From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: What you really need to know about the Internet’ on Wednesday 22 February.

Professor Naughton is also Vice-President of Wolfson College, Cambridge and the Observer’s Networker columnist* – and you can find him blogging at memex.naughtons.org.

The lecture, which is free and open to all, takes place at 5.30pm on 22 February 2012 in the Frank and Katherine May Lecture Theatre in our Henry Wellcome Building.

*The Guardian website don't seem to have updated his photo in about 15 years but honestly, that is him!