Wifi on Planes, agony or relief?

Wi-fi service are about to be rolled out on American planes in stages, following in Lufthansa's footsteps. As this article has mentioned, not everyone is pleased with the decision, and that includes me...

Imagine this, on an 8 hour flight (or longer), someone sitting next to/in front/behind you laughing away loudly at some random video/movie that he/she is watching on the laptop intermittently when you just want to sleep. Or even worse, that someone decides to watch videos on YouTube, without earphones!

Such occurences, though tolerable for most people on short-haul flights during the day, and by this I exclude red-eye flights and late night flights, it could just as well be an extreme annoyance for even just one out of the 100+ passengers on a flight. One never knows, perhaps someone works odd hours, or worked late, and someone just wants to sleep...

Airlines has effectively made even this, impossible...

I once was on an Air Asia flight, a flight that is maybe about two to four hours long (I refuse to take that airline for any flight that takes longer than that), and there was this guy sitting a few seats away, watching a movie... without headphones... and that was without access to internet... imagine what people would be doing when they have access to the net and are able to download or stream any nonsense they want...

Grrrrr....

Anyways... lets say the airlines are able to enforce earphones always policy on laptops... would anyone wants to be always available for their bosses? Isn't the Blackberry a curse enough? Why on earth would anyone willingly subject themselves to this extra pressure to be working all the time?

The airlines are becoming more and more like any other public transport system in today's world. Where anyone and everyone can fly (no points for guessing which airline has this as its tagline) and there is nearly no more glamour in going places.

In this sense, I really do sorely miss the airlines of the late 20th century, when it is an adventure (if not a priviledge) to be actually going anywhere by air.