I disagree.
Automated misses the quirky aspect that might make a new camera product actually work. Think about vinyl records. Digital music is all automated to the extent that all I have to do is say "Hey Google, Play <name just about any song ever recorded here>". Dig photography is almost the same and there are so many images in the cloud that soon you'll be able to ask, by voice, to bring up the image, whatever it is, from any perspective, even if you didn't take it because somewhere the "camera" is always running and feeding into the cloud.
No, the draw of vinyl records is that it's a thing and and experience to take part in. You select the actual record, take it out, clean it off, put it on the turntable, read the dust jacket and so on. When the side is done you get up to turn it over. You think about the last time you played it and who you might have been with. I think a mostly manual camera is the same: you put the film in, you wind, you focus, you set the controls. It's an experience - you do a thing. You hold the negatives (or slides) and look at them and think about where you were when you took it and who you might have been with and how cold it was on that day.
It becomes an experience and a skill. Automation is for cell phones. My $0.02.
--Jason