To describe at the item level or not to describe at the item level, is that the question?

Last monday was a strangely bookended day for me and the rest of you who have the "hat-trick" Intro to Archives, Intro to Technology, and Intro to Preseveration. In the morning, Dr. Callery and Dr. Cox drove home the message: "forget about item-level archival description," while Joel Blanco-Rivera in Preservation talked about archival digitization, which, he points out, requires that same much-maligned "item-level description." What is an archivist to do?

I haven't figured it out, but, based on a brief conversation with Dr. Tomer and some internet searching, here are some thoughts on the issue:
1) each side is probably looking at different literature, and probably have different ideas of "archives" in mind when they make their predictions or warnings
2) while not everything that is in traditional, physical media form will be digitized (especially with current technology), more and more - Joel said 93% - of information is being "born-digital", which is more available for item-level description through metadata schemes, etc.
3) new technology, such as this , this , or this represent the constantly advancing field of digital scanning, which should remind us that we don't know exactly what the future holds for the technology (while we should avoid the allure of futurism and technological determinism).
4) supply and demand: as online access to library and archival holdings increases, digitization and the loved/hated item-level description will happen where there is demand for it, consider the large amount of photographic material already available online because of the interest in photography supported by sites like Flickr - ex: Library of Congress.