There was a lot of discussion on this matter at an Institute for Airworthiness seminar I went to recently at City University. Frank Turner's presentation 'The Critical Interface' talked about increased automation divorcing both pilot and engineer from the aircraft, resulting increased instances of pilots asking 'what's it doing now?' and engineers being unable to diagnose faults on the ground as the pilots did not really know what had happened when the computer said 'no'.
Seminar stuff here:
http://www.ifairworthy.com/pdf/IFAproceedings.pdf