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 relationship between techno-optimism (Prometheanism) and free-market ideas in late-twentieth-century America. I am particularly interested in the rise of a new kind of public intellectual, the "tech guru," and how such figures deployed futurism, popular science, and new ideas about management and globalisation in their work throughout the 1970s-1990s.

The project is funded by the AHRC and I am also a Senior Scholar at Wadham College. Other roles include Outreach Tutor for the History Faculty, Study Advisor for Wadham, and coordinator of the Oxford Technology in Society Forum.

Before the DPhil, 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 research, 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.