NERC Dweller, you paint a rather scary picture for me. Technology may provide greater assistance in decision making roles and planning and the like. But you final para scares the willies out of me.
The de-skilling that controllers talk about is that of the core skills that a controller needs to keep aeroplanes apart when all that wizzy technology stops working. Then, of course, the techie people that said how wonderful and reliable it all was, start talking about a patch that should be ready the day after tomorrow. In the meantime the controllers have to try and remember all those skills that are not practiced regularly. That's de-skilling.
And, by the way, I don't think that developing more skills 'to understand what the system is trying to do' is much of a benefit. The tools that support ATC should be intuitive to use and function as advertised, i.e to support the controller and the service that he or she is providing.
Although it may not sound it, I'm not averse to technology in ATC - just badly specified, designed, implemented and supported technology. Sadly so much of what finds its way into the Ops Room is all these things.