I've returned from the post office bearing an HDMI display. It's an obscure brand housed in black brushed metal, less than the size and weight of a Nintendo Switch without controllers attached. It was cheap, it's not "Retina" resolution, it has one input, the speakers are an afterthought, and its settings are minimal. It's the only HDMI display I intend to keep.

Not too long ago, the experience of walking into Best Buy and taking in the sight of the first high-definition displays, seeing a truly detailed representation of a landscape or a city on a truly flat display was more than evolution after a lifetime of watching scan lines. It felt alien, like you knew something had changed about the world. At the dawn of HD, the largest screen was priced well over 10,000 US dollars. The less expensive ones still felt prohibitive and – while plasma and LCD remained a luxury, not a given – weighed a significant fraction of an upright piano.

Then prices slowly decreased, the impressiveness of the technology slowly increased, and money changed hands like precipitation in the water cycle. Half a generation later, the churning calmed, and it was unusual for a modest home not to feature a large and impressive flat panel. Unthinkable tonnes of CRTs had been discarded as waste. Lately, even these sleeker spectacles are sold used in my neighbourhood for under $100 US, in good condition, as people upgrade from them.

As the industry wanders more aimlessly in search of the next hurricane, I caress this handheld display I've brought home, supposing it will never hear the thunderous appreciation afforded its progenitors. I wouldn't expect it to. But when the affluent would spend a minor fortune on a massive box found only in landfills and museums today, you wouldn't have found this "cheap" TV at all, because it wouldn't even have been possible. If it were somehow there, it might have been as coveted a treasure.

So it goes. With communication, entertainment, exploration, medicine, and so on – science and engineering make yesterday's unattainable today's typical.