But we went from 1080p monitors to 5k monitors and so we are pushing 7x the number of pixels and at roughly twice the bits per pixel.

True, but I don't really think that accounts for the increase in memory usage.

	▲	hinkley an hour ago \| parent [-]
		No but it's the biggest one that's easy to forget. Feature factory work increases the surface area of every API you touch, and the proliferation of pre-written APIs expands the number of APIs you touch. The combination of the two is not quite O(n²) but the exponent is more than 1, so it's still geometric.