There is a good reason why most serious monitor reviews/guides recommend adjusting the brightness waay down. I think the common standard is around 120cd/m², which should be comfortable in typical indoors ambient lightning.
This is also one of the reasons why "HDR" is sort of a thing now. It enables utilization of the high brightness that modern displays are capable of in a controlled fashion, somewhat like what you are asking. Pure sRGB white on a (properly configured) HDR display should not be eyewateringly bright, while media can still show even brighter colors/"superwhite" for effect.
Essentially the problem boils down to color management. The fundamentals for it have existed for decades, but it hasn't really broken through outside some professional contexts. I think the historical reason for this is that people were so happy to have any colors at all on their computers that very few stopped to think if the colors should be controlled in some fashion.
Same way that HiDPI displays has forced software and systems to be more resolution-independent, I think HDR displays will force some degree of color management to mainstream. I doubt we will be getting professional-grade factory calibration everywhere, but just having workable system-wide color management and any sort of display profiles, even if it is accurate only in the broad strokes.
Incidentally the poor color management support in software is the main reason not to by so called "wide-gamut" (=AdobeRGB) monitors, unless you know what you are doing. Despite typically having better factory calibration etc and overall color capability, tons of stuff will look cartoonishly garish because software (like browsers) are not properly accounting for the expanded colorspace.
This is also one of the reasons why "HDR" is sort of a thing now. It enables utilization of the high brightness that modern displays are capable of in a controlled fashion, somewhat like what you are asking. Pure sRGB white on a (properly configured) HDR display should not be eyewateringly bright, while media can still show even brighter colors/"superwhite" for effect.
Essentially the problem boils down to color management. The fundamentals for it have existed for decades, but it hasn't really broken through outside some professional contexts. I think the historical reason for this is that people were so happy to have any colors at all on their computers that very few stopped to think if the colors should be controlled in some fashion.
Same way that HiDPI displays has forced software and systems to be more resolution-independent, I think HDR displays will force some degree of color management to mainstream. I doubt we will be getting professional-grade factory calibration everywhere, but just having workable system-wide color management and any sort of display profiles, even if it is accurate only in the broad strokes.
Incidentally the poor color management support in software is the main reason not to by so called "wide-gamut" (=AdobeRGB) monitors, unless you know what you are doing. Despite typically having better factory calibration etc and overall color capability, tons of stuff will look cartoonishly garish because software (like browsers) are not properly accounting for the expanded colorspace.