Its virutally impossible to predict the future rate of the evolution of technology and the internet. It is certainly true that over the last 20 years, the Internet has strongly evolved from the domain of the few to the daily use of everyone. Future evolution is probably along the lines of increased daily interaction with display pixels and a more immersive self-interest life style. This will become especially amplified through augmented reality devices





Furthermore the range of ON line services now offered is almost limitless (whether this is useful or not, only time will tell). Bandwidth is increasing, display technology is increasing and we are rapidly evolving to a world of visualized information. However, we are just in the infancy of high resolution visualized information.

As of July, 1 2012 it became possible to get a 27 inch monitor with native pixel resolution of 2560 x 1440 (3.68 Megapixels). This cost about $900 at the time (and of course has now come down in price significantly). When this monitor was released there was an almost immediate reaction that not that many pixels are actually needed and the current standard of 1920 x 1080 was sufficient.

It is not sufficient; at any given time everyone needs and wants more pixels - by the way - most of you probably have no idea how many real pixels are on your screen - you just go form the specs and trust them; download this handy pixel ruler and check yourself

Ideally, the size of the screen scales with the number of native pixels. For instance, a 13 inch laptop screen with native resolution of 1920 x 1080, maybe hard to read.

Below is a table of commmon standards that have applied to most screens for the past decade or so:



With the rise of Ultra High definition (so called 4K Video) at native pixel resolution of 3849 x 2160 (about 8 million pixels) - the next generation of Pixel Wars have started and once again comparison web sites now abound . A future resolution now being planned for is known as 8K and would be native resolution of 7680 x 4320

In the world of video cards, the industry now is at the HXGA standard of 4096 x 3072 (or about 13 million pixels). However, no vendor yet makes monitors at this resolution although the National Security Agency really wants them.





From the most recent episode of VICE (watch the whole 30 minutes if you can find it)



However, to get more display pixels, the research community is forced to use visualization walls (or VizWalls) as a means of stringing together tens of millions of pixels for displaying data. An example of a 15 million pixel "VizWall", illuminated by 16 projectors,is shown below.

Here is a 200 million pixel display composed of individual monitors.

The latest technology available uses a Liquid Phosphour Display technology and can integrate elements to produce this



And this exact thing (pictured here at Indiana University) will be in the new Science Library and available starting Fall 2016



The basic point here is that pixel visualization is going to become an increasingly larger part of daily life and evenutally these devices will replace the classroom chalkboard. Indeed, this should be done now (not 100 years from now). Another immediate possibility now involves surface computing desks:



But for now, the actual consumer is relegated to something like this for megapixel display in your room (start at 1:30):



All of this raises the issue of whether or not our brains are sufficiently well trained to assimilate this vast barrage of pixel data or will we lapse into endless seizures trying to process it all?