This isn’t irrelevant. Paper doesn’t shine light directly in your eyes. It’s a diffused reflection of surrounding light. Screens shines light directly at your eyes and can be much more straining for some.

If we’re talking adaptation, then ‘centuries’ is fairly irrelevant given how long our generations are…

Also, hasn’t it really only been a small number of centuries where reading has become a regular and critical function for the majority of the population?

Combine that with the fact that it’s long been easier/cheaper to make a uniformly light-coloured ‘paper’ and dark ink, than the reverse.

Using our history of dark-text might just be allowing the technology of the times to drive the future.

 

A more interesting comparison might be that we started with dark displays and light text (amber and green-screens) and moved to white displays with dark text later on.

Was that change due to a desire to mimic the paper medium?

Was it down to the quality of displays at the time (light bleed on CRTs might have driven this flip from dark to light once uniformity and brightness reached useful levels)?

Or was it because more people prefer dark text over light?

 

Regardless I’d like to finish by virtually girding my loins, brandishing my digital spear, and warning everyone that they’ll have to pry dark-mode from my cold-dead hands.