Regressive Professionalism

This is in response to a question written for our project. the question is as thus-Are cell phones destroying our professionalism?
I have seen the trend of phones moving towards multipurpose functions. the iPhone is the herald of this trend. as that device evolves, you will see people abandon their single-function devices in favor of these multi-purpose tools. before this all-in-one trend, many people would carry a portable music player, Digital camera, and cell phone while juggling all three for their respective tasks.
the addition of a camera in many phones has left me with very direct evidence of the consequences of the "iPhone". the plethora of sites which take advantage of amateur photography is staggering. flickr, twitter, digg, and others cater to those whom are always connected. any event which occurs is now documented by hundreds of phones and the pictures will arrive on the internet within minutes. The people of the world are not passively watching events occur anymore.
Those who perpetrate events on a national scale(war, sabotage, terrorism) are going to have to take responsibility for their actions as a connected world will "call them out" so to speak. regardless of the societal ramifications of the stratification of mobile devices, the effect on photography is staggering. when everybody has a phone with a camera, the only reason to buy a real camera is for hardcore camera-nuts. the general quality of photography has suffered a telling blow.
these new phones are giving everybody whom owns one the ability to forego the trained professionals of the past in favor of doing the job themselves. It should not be surprising to hear that my family uses camera phones in lieu of the 2 year old fancy digital camera we bought for my mother. point is, when everyone has the ability to do the jobs traditionally done by trained professionals, few will bother to pay someone for something they can do on their own.