First, I love my wife, but I don't want her stuck with me in a room for 10 years. That is a recipe for divorce. Any two people in that kind of situation for ten years will want to fucking kill each other. By the end, they will never ever want to see each other again. Alone is the ONLY way to do that. Second, I'm the polar opposite of you. To me, this situation would be kind of amazing. I'd honestly fucking love it. Nothing but time to relax, watching TV, play video games, read books, watch movies, and bullshit on the internet. There is zero pressure to work, pay bills, or do fucking ANYTHING. You know that question of "what would you do if you had enough money that you didn't HAVE to work?" Well, I'd pretty much do this. Stay at home, relax, watch TV, watch movies, play games, and read (oh, and take care of my kid, I guess). The only time of year that would get rough would be the holidays, because that is the only time I'd really miss my family (although Skype would ease the pain). The rest of the year? Yeah, that'd be awesome. In fact, if I didn't have a kid, I'd volunteer for this experiment in a minute. Oh, and if it were real. The only thing that I think people are screwing up is that there is a 3GB limit on bandwidth a month. 3 gigs is nothing, especially if you plan to download movies and TV shows or use the computer as "entertainment." With a 3 GB limit, you can forget online gaming, forget downloading more than a couple movies (maybe) a month, and forget streaming shit. You'd hit the limit after a day, at most, and be left without any internet for a month. You're much better off with the TV and 100 channels of your choice. You can chose some movie channels and be fine, and still using the computer for stuff like Facebook, message boards, and maybe even some (limited) Skype sessions.
I think the trick would be to use the phone as your internet access point, tethered to the computer, and just bypass the 3 GB limit completely with a good data plan.
I guess that could be a possibility, but most phone data plans, even at 4G speeds, aren't good enough to stream movies. I maintain the better option is the TV and choosing movie channels like HBO and Showtime. I'd pick every "premium" channel there is for movies. There isn't a rule that says you can't, and virtually every movie makes its way through those channels eventually. You may have a to wait a bit longer than you'd like, but they'll get through there. Not to mention 10 DVDs a month can be switched in and out, so it wouldn't be too tough to get newer movies fairly quick. I just think some people who choose ONLY the computer as their source of "entertainment" are going to have a lot of problems with the bandwidth.
You wouldn't be able to stream, but you'd be able to download (it'd take a while, but not like you're going anywhere). $100/month will give you unlimited data/messaging and more than enough voice minutes on pretty much any carrier other than AT&T plus there's always Skype.
It's a good point. That's precisely the reason I wouldn't pick my wife or one of my friends, I just seem to have forgotten to type it out. For ten years, dude? And you couldn't go for a walk outside or hang out with your friends or do anything other than stare at a screen or read books? I don't buy it. Look, I love it when I get to take a day off to just dick around, sit on my ass all day in my underwear (or not) and play video games or watch TV or whatever - but that's because I have a job during the rest of the week, so there's a pretty big contrast. The reason it's relaxing is because it's a break from your normal annoying/stressful/bullshit day. After a few weeks, I'd be drooling and banging on the walls. Now, there's a caveat to my initial distaste for this experiment. If the "cell" I was stuck in was actually a spaceship on the way to Mars or something cool like that, I'd be all in - because then there's a point to this exercise. Mainly, I reject the assumption made here that people would be happy to just sit there like a lab rat with electrodes attached to its pleasure centers and obey the arbitrary restrictions imposed on them by the experiment.