I admire the optimism, but I don't know how an ordinary user will be expected to be in it long term, unless he/she is incentivized from the level of specialization in maintaining a Lightning node. But I see a debate for altruism to boot-strap the network.
For me, there are mainly two conditions for the Lightning Network to really take off:
1) Providers of massively used services must support it.
2) It must be clear that transaction costs using LN are much smaller than without it.
Condition 1 is a chicken-and-egg problem. If there are many users, there will be many services, and vice versa. Ideally, some service providers could create something like a "beta area", where people can use LN to deposit and withdraw coins at their own risk but keeping the wallets of on-chain and LN activity strictly separated to minimize exposure to threats related to the alpha/beta state of LN software. But as it was discussed some pages ago this will probably only happen on a small scale.
So it is possible that a LN "takeoff" is more likely to come from a new increase of transaction fees due to fuller blocks (condition 2). This would make it again attractive for service providers to jump on the LN boat.
Obviously usability is also a factor, and thus I consider the Electrum support for LN a major step forward, even if its still limited. It may have contributed to the new records set in September/October for LN capacity.