Globalisation in imagery

This may end up being a rant, it may be interesting, perhaps even though provoking, I hope you stay with me... What does globalisation mean for photography?
Globalisation, the www and social networking has made images of all sorts increasingly available.  Good or bad, shared with permission or illegally downloaded, we have to accept that images are now seen more often be more people than ever before. This has some instinctual advantages as well as many disadvantages. By far the biggest advantage is that we as a society are becoming more visually aware, we appreciate better visual content and to some extent are not happy to be exposed to lesser quality imagery.  This maybe goes against the general movement to a more throw-away culture where quality and value are not held as dear as they have been in the past. Another massive advantage is ease of communication. Better access to images that tell stories in news, social comment and even fiction mean that these mediums can communicate more effectively and engage the viewer more readily.  You can now utilise imagery from every corner of the globe no matter how local your comment may be.
However with this comes some distinct disadvantages; the devaluation of the professional sector, the saturation of imagery into culture and the propensity to steal otherwise valuable content.  As a professional photographer the devaluation of the industry is especially important to me. I was at the pub the other day talking to a photography student and the words actually came out of his mouth "Yep, but, photography's easy" I was shocked, appalled and dumbstruck all at once, and the latter one isn't something that happens too often. I'll happily admit that pressing a button is easy, I'll even be happy to say that taking an image is easy, but photography, photography isn't easy and from someone investing a lot of time and energy into learning it, this should be sacrosanct. It's a common misconception that because we see a lot of images and because some people undervalue what images are, it's perceived as easy. I blame istockphoto and other like photo sharing web applications! istockphoto took the specific and refined process of supplying and purchasing images for commercial purposes out of the hands of professionals and put it into amateurs. This process not only devalued the stock image industry but also had a ripple effect onto the entire photographic industry by the saturation of mediocre, non-descript images into the public spectrum.
So how do we battle this? In the face of saturation, computer generated imagery and IT professionals shooting weddings on weekends there is only one thing to do, BE professional, raise the bar and produce images that stamp authority. It’s not challenging for many people to get a pretty image of a flower close-up, or a sunset over a beach, but getting a get likeness of someone is another matter entirely. The most amazing thing about the whole idea of globalisation is the one thing that it can't kill is the one thing that photography became famous for in the mid 1800's, peoples likeness. Professional photography comes out clearest in the most challenging situations, where technical, aesthetic, logistic and personal skills are all but to the test simultaneously. Simply put, when we photograph people.  When I tried to learn the guitar I could never sing and play at the same time, no matter how well I knew the song (and regardless of how bad my singing was) I couldn't manage it and it's exactly the same with photography, when photographing people 100% of your attention needs to be focused on the sitter, therefor everything else needs to be intuitive. That comes from experience, and that's what makes photography a profession, a challenge and more than anything an inspiration.