With Black Friday and Cyber Monday just a week behind us, many of us went out and purchased the newest and greatest computer monitors that money could afford. Thankfully on these deal-filled days, our money could buy us some of the highest quality monitors out there at a fraction of the price. The surprising thing, however, is that most people don’t know that there was a time when monitor technology wasn’t anywhere near what it is today. There weren’t four different types of monitors out there. Thin screens didn’t exist – monitors looked more like gigantic televisions that happened to sit on a desk.
With the rapid technological innovation of the 1990s came not only a bunch of different tech startups, but a lot of hardware innovations as well. Hard drives became smaller and held more data. All of a sudden what was once only able to be housed in a $100 hard disk drive could be housed in a mini USB stick. The pace of advancement was increasing at an exponential rate, and computer monitors were no exception.
You can afford more than one now...
When I was growing up, the only display available on the market was something called the cathode ray tube monitor. It was a beast of a machine that sat on your desk looking like a fortress. The screen was curved due to the way that the technology worked, so nothing was ever able to be displayed in a completely flat way. While at the time it was the pinnacle of technology, nowadays it is nothing more than a laughable relic of the past. It’s funny how quickly things become outdated in our modern society – and also a little bit sad. However, monitors have sped up other technological innovations of their own. With the productivity boost that comes from having a higher resolution and more display space, programmers and designers have been able to come up with tons of cool web applications and startups that have drastically improved our quality of life.
Take Twitter, Facebook, or even Yelp as an example. Imagine if the people behind these amazing applications were still using the old cathode ray tube monitors. They would be working with a fourth of the resolution on screens that displayed at around half the size. If they wanted to use two monitors in order to capitalize on more display space they would have to stack two of those huge things on their desk, cluttering their workspace. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like a situation rife with productivity and action to me.
Computer monitors are a necessary component in our technological age and something that we should be fortunate to have. Just two decades ago having a top of the line computer monitor would have cost you around two thousand dollars. Now, you can get one that is ten times as good for around one fourth of the price. The times have changed – for the better.
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