FSN Meeting – May 19

Update – TECHNOLOGY LEADS

Dr. Arthur Cordell

Arthur Cordell received a B.A. from McGill University and a Ph.D. (economics) from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He has worked for the US Government in Washington and as a business consultant in New York City.

Arthur was a Science Advisor with the Science Council of Canada for many years where he authored a number of studies ‘The Multinational Firm, Foreign Direct Investment, and Canadian Science Policy,’ ‘The Role and Function of Government Laboratories and the Transfer of Technology to the Manufacturing Sector’ ( with J.M. Gilmour) ‘The Uneasy Eighties: The Transition To An Information Society.’ Dr. Cordell was project officer for the study which led to Science Council report ‘Canada as a Conserver Society: Resource Uncertainties and the Need for New Technologies,’ he was also project officer for the Council report, ‘Planning Now For An Information Society: Tomorrow Is Too Late.’ He was closely associated with all Council studies on computers and communications. Arthur has also published widely in a number of academic and popular journals.

Arthur is co-author of such books as, Shifting Time: Social Policy and the Future of Work (1994); The New Wealth of Nations: Taxing Cyberspace (1997). Both deal, in different ways, with the impact of information technology on the quantity and quality of work (the future of work and working); the productivity of networks and how that productivity may be more widely accessed and distributed; the promise and potential of electronic commerce.

Arthur Cordell developed the idea of the ‘bit tax’, a way of getting at the productivity of a networked economy. The ‘bit tax’ also offers a way for different juridictions to apply a sales tax to electronic commerce. His current research is centred on the ‘unintended consequences of information technology.’

Currently, Arthur Cordell is Adjunct Professor, Communication Studies, Carleton University. His broad area of interest is the social, political and economic implications of information technology for Canadian society.