The era of the single monitor PC is coming to an end. The computer you use during the coming decade will have multiple monitors. Not just dual monitors like some folks have now, but many monitors of many sizes, such as those used by the character Alyx Vance in the Half Life 2 series of games (shown above).

Your PC will have one main monitor, probably a large, widescreen LCD. Around the monitor you’ll find half a dozen or so smaller LCD monitors. There will be 2-by-4 monitors, 10-by-10, some 4-by-12, and various other sizes.

A taste of things to come is the 7-inch Mimo USB LCD device, now available in Korea. The monitor can be oriented horizontally or vertically. Here’s a link to a Gizmodo article on the device, along with a pretty picture.

The Mimo will eventually be available outside of Korea, but I predict you’ll see other external, USB monitors come available over the next few years. Having those multiple monitors will soon become a craze.

Like today’s secondary monitors, you can map a USB monitor to the desktop. But due to the monitor’s small size, mapping the desktop will prove less-than useful. Instead, the USB monitor will most likely be used as a SideShow device.

What? You don’t know about SideShow? Few people do.

SideShow is a Windows Vista feature that allows you to display small programs — basically Windows Sidebar gadgets — on an external device. You can have a calendar, address book, stock quotes, the current album playing, your e-mail inbox, and other tiny programs humming along in those external windows.

You can even have interactive gadgets running in a SideShow window, providing that the USB monitor allows for touch input. Many of them do.

Presently, Windows Vista SideShow is just that: a sideshow. It’s not going anywhere because the hardware technology to take advantage of it just isn’t there. But if cheap, USB monitors become plentiful, that may no longer be the case. In fact, it will just take one nerd with a jealous glance at a PC setup with 5 or 6 of these tiny monitors to sell the idea to the world.