The Silicon Jungle by David H. Rothman

Yearly, the doctor should test for refraction, acuity, and accommodation. Make sure your health insurance covers bifocals and other glasses that your employees wouldn’t need except for your CRT. CRTs: Should They Go Down the Tube? Yes. Not immediately. But sooner or later. CRTs are harder on the eye than the better flat screens will eventually be, and although scientists haven’t proved that CRTs are a radiation threat, the small possibility remains. These bulky antiques, however, have been to the computer establishment what gas guzzlers were to Detroit. The CRT isn’t the most promising kind of computer screen—just the most entrenched.[47] Footnote 47: Information on flat-screen displays comes from _InfoWorld_, May 7, 1984, and other micro magazine articles; the _Washington Post_ of April 29, 1984; George Weiss, director of computer systems studies with Quantum Science Corp., New York; and Kenneth Bosomworth, president of International Resource Development, Inc., a market-research firm in Norwalk, Conn. Admittedly, CRTs have improved to the point where some pocket-sized TVs can use them. But in compactness and low-power consumption, CRTs will never rival the flat-screen displays. “People will begin using flat-screen portables as regular desktops,” a New York researcher correctly says.[48] Flat-screen computers may not be as viewable now as the best CRT displays, but this may quickly change. What’s more, flat-screen machines don’t hog desks as the Kaypro II-style portables can. After all, the flat screens are essentially—flat. They don’t need hefty transformers, moreover, and don’t burn out like old vacuum tubes. CRTs _are_ vacuum tubes. Low voltage is still another plus of most flat screens. Not that CRTs are normally a shock hazard, but you’ll presumably feel safer if you didn’t sit near a 20,000-volt gizmo flinging electrons around inside some glass. Footnote 48: The “people will begin using” quote is from a Weiss interview with _USA Today_. Also, as David LaGrande, an official with the Communications Workers of America notes, flat screens may “eliminate the radiation danger, reduce the risks for pregnant women.” And unless you spray a flat display with radioactive material, it just won’t give you cancer. Again, no one’s proved that CRTs will turn people’s bodies into tumor farms. But why gamble? Your caution won’t hurt labor relations. Flat screens, also, don’t flicker tiresomely as many CRTs do, and someday they may boast more fully formed images than those from the CRTs. So you might make fewer errors reading material from the screen. The word “might” is important. Many =liquid-crystal displays=—=LCD=s, like the wristwatch kind—showed much cruder images in 1984 than did typical CRTs. The broken-up letters might bother you just like those from the cheap dot-matrix printers. Also, some LCDs offered horrid contrast between the screen background and your typing. That was as of late 1984. Even cheap LCDs in the future could do away with the breakup and contrast problems. Already the Japanese are selling color TVs with LCDs. Perfected, LCDs could make computerized offices brighter and cheerier. They don’t glow. Rather, they reflect light, just like paper, so you needn’t darken the office. In fact, light helps.[49] Footnote 49: For a reminder of the advantages of LCDs in avoiding a dark office, I’m grateful to Bert Vorchheimer, a corporate communications specialist, who, as a sideline, wrote some farsighted articles on office ergonomics. And if LCDs don’t fully pan out? There’s yet another choice—=electropheretic= screens, which may offer decent contrast and even beat CRTs’ sharpness. Here’s the theory. A magnetic charge pushes tiny particles to the surface of the screens, and patterns of particles form images. These gizmos will tax your battery less than some other flat-screen displays do. And listen to this: when you turn an electropheretic off, it _remembers_. The images on your screen don’t vanish. Now, combine that wrinkle with memory chips that use next to no power and can be running all the time. And what do you have? A computer that will automatically shut off without harm if you didn’t tap a key after a certain stretch of time. Just like a calculator. So—battery makers, beware! There are still other alternatives to CRTs. One is the =electroluminescent= screen—used on the Grid Compass portable—which glows and is sharper than the LCD. Electroluminescents in 1984, however, were far too expensive for the average computer buyer; the Grid was selling for $4,250, and much of that was the cost of the display. A second failing of electroluminescent screens is that they’re electricity hungry. You can’t operate them with miniature batteries. Another LCD alternative is the =plasma panel=, which glows with a gas mixture consisting mainly of neon. Plasmas don’t flicker. The characters are sharp; the contrast, excellent. But backup circuitry has been expensive; and even small plasmas, with the accompanying electronics, cost several thousand dollars in 1984—a far cry from a $150 CRT monitor. To sum up, the main advantages of flat screens are their lightness, low power consumption in most cases, safety, lack of flicker, and very likely a better view in the long run. As of late 1984 the trade-offs (at least in the case of LCDs) were: ▪ The broken-up, somewhat fuzzy letters and the low contrast between them and the background. ▪ The need to have the display at just the right angle from you to get the sharpest picture. This could get in the way if you were moving the LCD to reduce glare. ▪ The comparatively slow speed with which letters or numbers appeared on an LCD after you’ve typed. ▪ The general lack of full-sized 24-line screens with 80 columns. The Data General portable debuted with 24 lines and a screen measuring 11 inches diagonally—a welcome exception, even if the quality of the characters still wasn’t good enough for heavy use. Since many flat screens were on portables, there were other ergonomic problems not related to the display technology per se. In late 1984, most flat-screen portables lacked detachable keyboards. But the limitations of LCDs were the main problems. A reporter friend, banging out stories for his paper at times in the field, told me he’s survived the 40-column, 8-line screen of the Radio Shack Model 100 very well. But I’m not surprised. He’s also brooked that clunky Select software, which gets in the way of corrections and insertions. Gene, you see, apparently knows what he’s going to write—he needn’t watch the screen as much. I wish I were as decisive. At any rate, what was right for Gene wouldn’t necessarily be right for a clerk who’ll be at the keyboard seven or eight hours a day. No matter what hardware and software you end up with, don’t lose sight of three goals, among others: