OK folks, the sky is not falling!
Sorry, but negativity is one of my pet peeves. The media and the world is so quick to point towards the "end of the world" and 9999% of the time they are completely wrong....yet we still listen to them!
Every new technology that is introduced is immediately followed by the doomsayers who say the world will collapse because of it. I can remember when the PC became popular it was supposed to spell the end of the secretary or administation specialist or any one of countless other jobs. Quite the contrary, it has produced a whole new slew of jobs; data entry, IT specialist, network administrator, web administrator, programmers, and on and on...all jobs that mostly did not exist before the computer.
Another example? The robot. Detroit wasn't going to need humans anymore. They were just going to buy robots and replace everyone. Quite the contrary. Now we have a more valuable workforce composed of more technically advanced workers, many who used to work before the robot who have been retrained to be even more valuable than before.
Digital photo equipment will not spell the end of the professional photographer...it will only help the pro be even better. It's just a tool. It's the photographer that makes it "sing". And that is because of composition skills...skills you don't get by taking 10,000 images and getting a lucky shot.
I have a question. Why should anyone even attempt to be a web developer? I mean, you can buy web design software just about anywhere extremely affordable so you can make your own website. The software makes it extremely easy too. So why are there still web developers?? It's two-fold. First, most normal people simply don't have the time to devote to learning everything about developing a website and maintaining it. They might try a personal site, but not a commercial site. Second, they would rather pay a professional to do it right to have a better chance of getting the results they want from their site.
Photography is no different.
What digital photo equipment has done is introduce change into the industry...change that is always inevitable in every industry every day of every year. Adapt and overcome. It's always been that way.
I'm sure when they first introduced the neighborhood drugstore photo lab, the doomsayers probably said it was all over for the pro photographer....now everyone can develop their own pictures affordably so they might as well pack it up!
