Windshields, holograms: The future of the idiot box

They once feared it would take over the world. Access to a small, personal screen would draw us in, serve as the eyes and ears of the establishment, isolate us from each other.

- Vishal Mathur

It turned out, of course, that the fears weren't entirely unfounded.

Once we had shrunk the magic of the moving picture down to the size of a box, there would be no going back. It has only shrunk further from there. Much of our extended screentime is now spent in front of our phones, whose flickering personalised algorithms keep us riveted as they peddle, pitch and endlessly capture attention and data, even as night turns to morning and we lie side by side, late into the night.

Soon, this may feel out-of-date.

The future could be a world of screenless laptops, smartglasses, pinch gestures, and a screen only the wearer can see, overlaid on top of their real world.

It’s been quite a journey from the bulky cathode-ray tubes and bulbous fluorescent screens of the 1930s.