Dave Walsh

Dave is a full-time lecturer and Harvey Scholar mentor. His principle research area focuses on the development of the American computing industry as it emerged from university and military investment during WWII. More broadly, his work traces the development of nineteenth- and twentieth-century cultural imaginations of technology in historical contexts, and how these figurations codified racial, gender, and economic inequalities within the political and cultural mystique of an ‘objective’ and ‘rational’ technological society. Dave is also a vocal proponent of digital privacy rights and digital security education. His courses include studies on race and policing surveillance in urban contexts; the engineering and cultural history of the internet; the histories and texts of North American utopian and dystopian techno political futurism; the engineering and cultural history of computing and computers; late nineteenth century industrialism and automobile manufacturing; St. Louis and the techno racial politics of the 1904 world’s fair; the technological infrastructure of fake news and election meddling; and technological mechanisms of propaganda propagation and consumption during national crises.