Future of a designer - a discussion

I would like to enter a discussion into something I feel rather strongly about, so if you have time, grab a coffee and drop your two pennyworth into the mix. I would be dearly interested to read fellow designers thoughts on this matter.
How about the changing role of what was once loosely considered a graphic design profession. It is well documented that Graphic design has undergone massive changes for such a young profession, however the role of a graphic designer was always considered a magical art, from the design of the page elements to the visual communication as a whole for the product. A number of things have radically changed this role in the last 20 years, changed it to such an extent that unless the designers feel they "get with the times" spending years learning new software, new media and how to implement their ideas in this new media, they will become extinct.
This is reflected in the myriad of ways design is now taught at universities and the fact that less emphasis is put on the design theory and is more of a technological nature for cross platform implementation.

With the exponential increase in cross media platforms I now believe that the role of the graphic design has become compartmentalized into a much larger system of work using various methods and software to apply visual communication to a campaign/product. In effect original perceived role of a graphic designer only hangs by a thread in the form of certain print media.

It is also my belief that the essence of what is considered "good design" is becoming a forgotten art due to the fact that there are so many disciplines to learn for a design workflow now that you cannot possibly be expert in all and therefore creativity within this new framework shall suffer as a result. This produces "the jacks of all trades". We've all seen them.

Designers have been part of this problem for refusing to become involved with this new emerging process, mostly shunning it and criticizing its ethics and values in favors of their own insular and now gasping art. By not jumping on board and joining the "team", they have cut themselves off in their insular nature, more importantly they have allowed the new design to become a Frankenstein's monster. Spec work is an example of this. An Aberration in eye of the designer. "Do my logo for 10 dollars competition", winners will have a chance to show our logo in their portfolio. My goodness if we ever needed proof design is a dying art then this is it!

The graphic designers tradition role of visual communication is now only a concept that is spread across multimedia systems, the idea (the concept) is the initial phase of the process and no matter how much they want to see the design process through they simply cannot understand all of the phases involved to such an extent where control is warranted. In effect they will produce the blueprint but not necessarily control the outcome. This is how successful design businesses' will survive now, but beware the jack of all trades who considers himself a designer, this guy will produce media from start to finish for a pittance, without much thought and the implementation of "sparkly" 3d motion graphics for your product. Using templates and pre-produced body-parts they will construct a monster for the business that will probably end in a law suit. This is the type of design we are up against now, which is why we need to work closer together and be disciplined in what we do, we have more choices to make and we need to stick with our chosen area. Only then can we defeat jack and his minions.