> Paper is black on white for a reason That's a bullshit argument when you're talking about technology thousands of years old made with material constraints.

> Paper is black on white for a reason That's a bullshit argument when you're talking about technology thousands of years old made with material constraints. How would parchment be rendered black, smear it with soot, which would then rub off on everything it touched? Would you instead ink the entire page? Would something other than parchment be used, and if so what? And what white pigments would have lent themselves to writing? With dark ink you have numerous options, some of them cheaper than dirt. For white pigments you're looking at chalk or lead oxides, neither of which is nearly as available as a little charcoal. I'm not disputing that for non-emissive text, dark on light is better. But our culture adopting this scheme had a lot more to do with materials that were available in the past than anything else. The alternative wasn't evaluated because it was simply less practical to implement.