Ask the owner of any Apple iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch or the owners of several competitive Android devices: "What's the best thing about your device?" Many owners will reply, "The screen." Indeed, Gorilla Glass and similar glass products on many of today's handheld devices produce better displays than that of any traditional desktop computer screen. The Apple MacBook Pro I am using to write this article also has an excellent video display, called a Retina Display, that produces better video than any other laptop I have ever seen.

Corning knows something about the glass business as well as about computers, as the company makes the display screens for many of today's laptop and handheld computers. Now Corning has released a video showing the company's vision of the future of computer displays. The video has nothing to do with genealogy but can you imagine using these tools to view images of census records and other old documents?

The video seems to show "computers everywhere." I found it interesting that there is not a single desktop computer shown with a separate screen and separate keyboard and a beige-colored box containing the rest of the components.

I don't expect all computer manufacturers to switch to these displays overnight but I suspect we will see something similar to these display screens within a few years as prices continue to drop.

You can watch the "Glass Computers of the Future" video at http://youtu.be/6Cf7IL_eZ38. I suggest you watch it in full-screen mode to get the maximum effect. (On my screen, that is the icon that looks like a square box in the extreme bottom right of the display window.)