That's not something limited to computers or technology. Many entities are represented with an icon of the first or first popular iteration of am item. A train

That's not something limited to computers or technology. Many entities are represented with an icon of the first or first popular iteration of am item. A train has smoke, lights are bulbs, authors use feather pens etc. One could argue that it's actually faster to parse words than icons sometimes (don't know what traffic sign planners would think about that)