I think that if the public continues to putter along on auto-pilot for much longer, absolutely not. Acknowledging that I sound like some nutbag conspiracy theorist, we can already see systems of mass control being quietly put in place. At the moment, the general public appears to be very accepting of these systems, or just totally unaware that they can (and will) be used to control society in the future.

I'm not just talking about your three letter agency direct dragnet surveillance type programs, I'm also talking about stuff like cloud-based voice & speech recognition that is only one FISA warrant away from being the NSA's very own voice-print database. I don't even think many of the people implementing these systems intend them to be used as systems of mass control. But they will, and they will be used very intentionally to stifle any kind of popular 'neo-luddite' movement.

Why? Because automation will result in massive concentration of wealth (remembering the 'auto-pilot' assumption). Production will become extremely capital-intensive (i.e. people replaced with machines), and the few people who are not owners of capital yet still 'employed' will probably be paid astronomical salaries due to their similarly astronomically high 'labor factor productivity'. So you will have a handful of extremely wealthy 'neo-capitalists' with much greater scope for 'free political speech' (i.e. buying politicians with their mountains of money).

Last time we had a huge jump in the amount of capital used in production (the industrial revolution), while I wouldn't call it a 'fair fight', workers at least had a fighting chance, because:

- Capitalists had relatively less resources than future neo-capitalists will. To analogise, if 'industrial revolution capitalists' could employ professional strike-breakers and private security forces, future neo-capitalists will have the resources to field entire armies. With laser rifles.

- Society hadn't, just prior to the industrial revolution, constructed massive and intricate systems of total social control. We're doing this right now, in many cases not realising it.

- The state was at least sort of impartial in most cases. In some historical periods the state even sympathised with workers' concerns, due the formation and mainstream success of political parties representing 'labor'. Even now, these 'labor' parties seem totally adrift, like rebels without a cause. And the effect of money (er, I mean 'political speech') in politics will only get exponentially worse as capitalists become exponentially richer (er, more eloquent and verbose).

- There were clearly identifiable groups of people (i.e.'the workers at factory x', 'the workers in industry y', etc.) with identifiable and specific common goals and interests (i.e. 'get industry y to share more of its profit with labour', 'get factory x to build fire escapes so we all don't burn to death next time' etc.). In the context of future automation, this simply will not exist. Good luck organising a strike at, say, googles robot factory, when you're not actually an employee (as you're not employed at all).

Under the 'auto-pilot' assumption, the only power we will truly have is as consumers. Even just typing that last sentence makes me feel a little ridiculous. Because of the factors outlined above, there will be no counter-revolution. There will be no Karl Marx. There will be no new 'extreme opposites' (like communism), nor will there be new 'moderate balancing forces' (like labor unions). They will be killed off in their infancy or, ideally, never conceived to begin with.

So if you don't want this future, the time for action is right now.