Personally I saw no argument, more a continuing discussion...
We are in a time of huge change in photography, a shifting of mediums and that, like every change before (think about glass plates to film, film to roll film, 35mm, color film, etc) brings major chnages in the way that photography is used and perceived. To not discuss it would be to miss it, to fail to comprehend it. I think it's important, regardless of how one feels about what is happening, to at least understand that it is changing photography. I'm usually an advocate of "it the photographer, not the camera," but the quantum leap in ubiquity of cameras (especially with cell phones but also with tiny digital cameras) and the ubiquity of images (ongoing in society, but now accelerated by the internet), needs to be noted and discussed.
There are certainly a lot of trivial discussions to be found on the web about film/digital. Endless meaningless technical discussions, how many bits equals film, etc etc, take place with no value to anyone except the participants who seem to enjoy sparring with anonymous internet users. But that's not what I see happening here. Even if the arguments do seem to circle around at times, it's about the real issues that are confronting most people who are photographing.
Jeff Spirer
Photos: http://www.spirer.com
One People: http://www.onepeople.com/
Surfaces and Marks: http://www.withoutgrass.com
