The Reconfigured Eye

One thing I found to be very interesting in William Mitchell's discussion of digital photography, is this concept of "computational ready-mades". One key difference between digital photography and photography is digital version's ability to be seamlessly manipulated. Digital photography leaves no distinct marker of being "part scanned photograph, part computer synthesized", and hence has a certain ambiguity of originality. It has the ability to be completely ready-made and yet reconfigured such that it is completely original at the same time. Is this "ready-made" ambiguity a telling feature of modern art? Duchamp's art was also both ready made and original, in that they were already constructed objects that were appropriated a new meaning. Andy Warhol and many other modern artists created collages and used ready-made items to create new, original works. If ready-made art, such as conceptual art and digital photography, is the art of the modern age then does that make analog photography, like painting, dead. Is its inability to be reconfigured a trait of the past?
Also in Mitchell’s discussion, the author describes digital photography’s ability to be constantly fixed, retouched, and enhanced. Does this create a representation of the world that will always be more perfect than it actually is? Does this create a polarized understanding of reality, divided between a world that we see in visual representations such as magazines and newspapers, and a world that we experience in our day-to-day lives?