For whatever reason, I'm a little fearful of flying, so wifi will be a more than welcome distraction/time waster. On the other, I do see the point about losing the one last place where you're truly free out of contact. I see this change as being inevitable though. We corporate types will adapt, just like when the blackberry came along and took away our nights and weekends.
For those of who are self-employed and cannot "get away from the boss's expectations" anyway... I would really appreciate the opportunity to be productive on a cross-country flight.
As for those expectations of being at beck-and-call 24/7... corporate bosses (and clients) need to have some limits set. And that's not an issue of technology - or one to be solved by reduced technology.
Internet access is one thing. But the day they have cellphone access on planes will be (god willing) full of bloodletting and apocalyptic reckoning. I don't have a cellphone, and it is an utter mystery to me how cell users are OBLIVIOUS to the intense social disruption they cause by their one-sided shouting-match competitions consisting more-or-less entirely of:
CALLER: I'm going to blah-blah-blah [at 115 decibels]
CALLEE: [unheard]
CALLER: Yeah, I'm just going to blah-blah-blah [at 120 decibels]
CALLEE: [unheard]
CALLED: Yeah, I'm blah-blah-blah bullshit bullshit more bullshit times 100 [at 125 decibels]
On long distance trains, we solve this by having quiet carriages, where phone calls are banned (also game playing is banned unless you turn the sound off). This doesn't quite work because there aren't enough staff to fully enforce it on a train, but presumably staffing ratios are better on a plane.
A plane isn't exactly the same environment as a long distance train, granted, but it seems an obvious first thing to try.
