> The problem almost
> always comes down to this: If they unplug from the machine, what is waiting
> for them?
What's waiting for them is the most difficult and dangerous enemy of all: themselves. I suppose we can hand out the Little Red Pill of dialectics, but we can't make the choice between the possibility of total destruction (the objective potential of the total system) and the possibility of salvation (the subjective potential of the same system) *for* people. They have to do that themselves. Otherwise, we'd just be another loop of the total system, replicating Adorno's bad eternity of domination.
To switch from sci-fi posthistory to fantasy prehistory: we cannot wield the power of the Ring, a.k.a. the repressive totality, for good. The good requires the negation of that totality. Melt the One System to Rule Them All down in its own forge, or something like that.
-- DRR