There is a world outside nice and homogeneous USA. Here in Europe there are 50 different countries in roughly the same geographical area. Different languages, culture, attitude towards safety and regard for human lives. ATC controlling aircrafts will never happen, thus there will always be the need for someone in the aircraft to take (and evaluate and possibly decline) instructions from ATC
I believe FANS was developed to eventually remedy that nasty little communication problem you have in Europe. It is all over the world, I have experienced it, worst influence is a native tongue in a native land then ATC switching back to english to handle us.
A recent crash that this was probably an issue but not made a big deal of was the EMB v/s 737 over the Amazon. Used to hear altitude and heading reported in Portuguese all the time, you can do a good job of avoiding an RA or worse if you hear another aircraft reporting he is at the same FL heading towards you by questioning ATC.
I can see a single pilot in the next 30 years operating a completely automated aircraft pressing a button every 15 minutes just to tell ATC he is awake. He would do a prescribed amount of T/O's and landings but mostly just be there until the human factor in aviation was trusted as not necessary.
We are testing some aspects of what will be today with military UAV's. I can immagine unmanned freighters first then pax. When.. Who Knows?
I realize what I speak of is more or less science fiction today but look at the history of how dreams soo often become reality.
During the course of even the most routine flights a crew will use different levels of automation in different ways to accomplish different goals. Right down to turning it off completely if it isn't doing the job in a dynamic situation. An indication of how well a pilot understands the aircraft is when they know what level is appropriate at any given time, and can anticipate what level will be required in the immediate future. That takes judgement, knowledge and experience.
Some things you just can't program into a computer.
This is only applicable to the technology and procedures we use today, this will change, just as it has been changing over the last century more or less. Anything can be programmed, you do not fly at your will you do so following teachings and procedures. Teachings and procedures are nothing more than a set of logic tree's "programming".