Post-Industrial Society

Bell article: I agreed with part of this article, but the fact that it was written in 1973 made it extremely dated. The part about sectors of work and occupations was interesting and I'd like to see some of the statistics about the workforce today, but it many of the numbers now seem far too optimistic. While I agree that much of society is moving toward specialization and services, they seem to forget that we will almost certainly always need garbagemen, plumbers, and so forth, which wouldn't necessarily be a "highly trained working class." His section on the problems the U.S. will have as we move toward a post-industrial society also seems dated, as we have had no troubles seamlessly shifting further into a post-industrial society.

Kumar article: Kumar does not seem to give much of his own thoughts or opinions in the article, he just drops names and uses other people's ideas for pages at a time. Other than that, his thoughts on globalization are a little overly optimistic, but not completely out of the question. You can already see the effects now, as the lines between countries are being blurred, especially with the internet and other forms of communication. The idea that information technology will diminish paid work is kind of a frightening one, as that would hurt a lot of people.

Urry article: Urry's article was a very interesting one, especially since it gave an extreme counter-opinion to the Kumar and Bell articles. He seems like a very cynical person, but some of his criticisms are valid. His point about people being in service employment but not providing final services to the consumer was particularly intriguing. It was also interesting that he quoted the Communist Manifesto in reference to Britain. He also agrees with Kumar on the globalization issue.