Daniel McAteer

Research Topic

Freedom on the Electronic Frontier: New Spirits of Capitalism and Silicon Valley, 1970-2000.

Supervisor: Professor David Priestland and Professor Ralph Schroeder

My project investigates the history of social and political thought in relation to digital technology. Specifically, it looks at the history of technological utopianism in the United States, c.1970-2000, and the role of technological utopianism in the wider ideologies of the period, especially neoliberalism. I am particularly interested in the intersections between futurism, systems theories, new ideas about management and globalisation in the 1970s and 1980s, and how these things were synthesised in the work of Silicon Valley's tech gurus. I also coordinate a TORCH doctoral network, the Oxford Technology in Society Forum.
 

Supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Council and Wadham College, I began work on my DPhil project in early 2021. Before this, I completed my undergraduate studies in history at Oxford's Pembroke College, followed by postgraduate work in the history of science, medicine, and technology at St Edmund Hall, supported by the Ertegun Graduate Scholarship Programme in the Humanities. 

Outside academia, I used to work for one of Oxford's access and outreach initiative, OxNet, which seeks to widen participation in higher education among historically disadvantaged groups. I continue to have a keen interest in university access, and welcome opportunities to contribute to any initiatives where I might be useful.