David Bates

David Bates is a Professor in the Department of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, holding an active faculty position with office hours scheduled for Fall 2024. His work bridges historical scholarship with contemporary technological and cognitive inquiries.

His research spans European Intellectual History, Media and Technology, Cognition and Epistemology, Political Thought, and Artificial Intelligence. Bates examines the entanglement of machine technologies, somatic processes, media practices, and social/political organization across historical periods—from Cartesian robotics to digital-age AI—challenging isolated-mind models of cognition through historical analysis of automaticity.

His publications reveal consistent interdisciplinary engagement with the intersections of reason, technology, war, and political organization. The 2024 book An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence synthesizes decades of research, tracing how human thinking emerges through technical systems from Descartes to cybernetics. Earlier works like Plasticity and Pathology (2016) and States of War (2011) establish foundations in neural subject formation and Enlightenment political theory.

Bates served as Director of the Berkeley Center for New Media (2010-13), founded its History and Theory of New Media lecture series (co-organized 2011-19), and chaired the Rhetoric Department (2014-17). His teaching covers undergraduate courses and graduate seminars on technology-science-cognition history and legal-political ideas, with ongoing supervision of advisees through departmental activities.

Based at 7315 Dwinelle Hall, Bates maintains active institutional engagement through the Berkeley Center for New Media and Rhetoric Department, with research projects examining cybernetic systems theory's impact on reconceptualizing living organisms and political organizations.