Gretchenfrage, yes, I remain on the philosophical side as well, happy in retirement and doing a little flight safety work on the side. Nor do I desire to lobby...I consider myself deeply fortunate just to have achieved a childhood dream. Sadly not many can say this and I am forever humbled.
As I watched our Navs being replaced with INS, then the first trials of Honeywell's "FMS" (on a B727) and the developments of the L1011 & B767 which initially was built with a panel for the oiler, I never felt that automation was "inevitable" as an operational solution to the problems of flight itself.
But in order to wring maximum mileage and carrying capability per kilo burnt and to reduce crew costs perhaps the "solution" was somewhat inevitable, but certainly not from a human point of view.
It is true that flight safety has been enhanced thereby but I would never believe anyone who may claim that safety was the prime objective in automated flight.
Not only raw flying skills but instrument scan, thinking skills and knowledge of the machine and of aerodynamics of high speed, high altitude flight have all atrophied to the point where fewer and fewer do not know how much they don't know. I've written at length elsewhere about this.
The T7 seems to be a very happy balance. My favourite was the L1011-500 but the A330 was a very fine airplane once one understood autoflight and that usually takes a year or two of hard work. Trouble is, if I may be permitted one small advertisement, the airplane works so well that once the bread-and-butter push-buttony thing is learnt it masks this need for deeper knowledge and some people who fly it get comfortable, then lazy.