What is real impact of digital on photography profession?

In article <403ed85e$1@newsflash.abo.fi>, firstname.lastname RemoveThis @abo.fi
says...
 > Might not be the case as we move to 64-bit processor architectures.
 > Although they have (atleast for now) 32-bit emulation, it might not be
 > enough for that 16-bit shell for an 8-bit OS.

I read an article yesterday about how Intel has gotten the clue that
people want backwards compatibility forever. They had tried to move the
world on the 64 bit computing via the Itanium CPU series which could not
run 32 bit code and found themselves locked into only the high end server
market. AMD came out with their 64 bit CPU's that could also run 32 bit
code and they started selling like hot-cakes.

So we may be able to run those old OS's for quite some time. Besides, as
new machines get faster and faster they are able to emulate the older
machines at their old performance levels pretty well.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->

In article <uugn301evdua8klqd9ekf8rg39lio0htc7.RemoveThis@4ax.com>, do_not.RemoveThis@e-mail.me
says...
 > On Mon, 23 Feb 2004 14:21:07 -0800 (PST), sbrav.RemoveThis@aol.com (SBrav) wrote:
 >
  > >Or in the long term will it effectively kill
  > >photography as a profession?
 >
 > No more so than the Kodak Brownie, the SLR, the Polaroid, and
 > disposable cameras.
 >
 > There's a lot more involved in taking a good picture than the type of
 > camera used -- particularly true of studio photography (amateurs
 > sometimes get luck in the out-of-doors, but how many good photos have
 > you see amateurs take of products used in advertising, as just one
 > example).

I was just about to say the same thing. However, after reflecting on how
e-mail has affected writing and spelling skills, I am starting to have
some doubts. When e-mail first started to become popular there were all
kinds of articles about how this would improve writing skills since
people would be writing more. But what has actually happened is that the
expectations of readers has dropped drastically. No one expects an e-mail
to be grammatically correct, be spelled correctly or even to not be chuck
full of terrible typo's.

When the web surged in popularity there was a huge demand for content. Do
you think they waited for an entire army of writers and graphic artists
to be trained properly before they started throwing up site after site of
supposedly compelling content. Not at all. They just grabbed whoever they
could and pressed them into service. The results were barely worth
reading, and sometimes were barely readable, but they are all out there
claiming to be the most important thing you will read all year. What's
worse, is that there are people devoting their lives to archiving all
this 'content' as if it were really important.

Anyway, I have seen the same thing when it comes to photography. While
there is still a demand for high quality photographers, more and more
people are doing themselves what they used to pay professionals to do. I
see this primarily in the boring field of photographing items for special
purpose catalogs. A manufacturer used to have to hire a professional
photographer to photograph all of their products. Now they just hand a
digital camera to their secretary and have them go at it. It ends up
looking like crap but people still buy the products. There are chapters
in books just about how to photograph products for display on eBay. I
even see photographs in brochures that are just abysmal. The buying and
viewing public just doesn't seem to care.

The general view seems to be if you do care about the quality of anything
other than a sports team then you are just a freak that is too negative.

The point of all this rambling is that making it easier for regular
people to do anything not only reduces the need for highly skilled
professionals but it also greatly reduces the expectations of the general
public. This constitutes a double-whammy which seriously affects the
ability of those who are highly skilled to continue to demand the
compensation they were getting before.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->