I think blocks provide a good functionality and we should avoid getting rid of them. However in their current use with their assigned regions they are just outdated. I fantasise about a future where we will still have blocks as a plugin type. But they are small bits of html templates that can be inserted just about anywhere we want it. They do provide awesome functionality but they lack the flexibility that we need in the age of the modern web.
I think in the future we should be able to let a theme fetch a block with the new requireJS framework and decide whether it wants to put it in an oldschool blockregion, or even in the place of a course section. The theme is the controller. The plug-ins are the views and the models.