Having been around then, light backgrounds on old CRTs really showed off astigmatism and non-linearity and blooming and general problems of the technology, and 2002 is modern enough for "famous tech people" to have LCDs. Light backgrounds were a display of conspicuous consumption for those who could afford LCDs.
Blooming, for kids these days, is when the HV supply of a CRT is poorly regulated in a constant-power sense and changes in display brightness cause changes in electron beam current cause fluctuation in acceleration voltage literally make the screen zoom in and out a couple percent while under high load. The poor regulation was usually worse under high current demand, so you could "clear ; top" a black background and there would be no weird zoom effects but a white background might zoom flutter in and out as the content of the screen varied. Very annoying to have one window flutter a little because another had its content change.
Interference and weird aliasing problems showed up in vast fields of illuminated white background more than unlit black background. Retrace lines looked particularly awful on large fields of white. Yes there's a clamping circuit that SHOULD totally shut off the beam on vert-retrace but as you'd expect it looked awful on a $200 CRT monitor and beautiful on a $1000+ monitor. Its just not noticeable on a black background.
There was also a filtering effect, light backgrounds having terrible image quality, a tech giant of 2002 spent decades staring into mostly black background terminals so anyone who in 2019 would not be able to stand black backgrounds was simply filtered out of the pool of possible tech giants back in that era. If you couldn't stare into the abyss of a TRS-80 model III black background sorta low res CRT display for 40+ hours per week, you simply had to leave the computing field in 1981, for example.
The only times we used light backgrounds on CRTs was for non-text purposes (games) and very strange lighting problems (the hated glossy screen with a light source reflected into your eyes, perhaps a very bright CRT background would reduce the massive glare distraction)
To some extent USABLE white background on a CRT was conspicuous consumption in that it was unusable on a $250 monitor or a TV connected to a 1980s home computer but usable white background CRT meant someone bought a $1000+ fancy name brand monitor. Anyone could have a decent black background display regardless of personal wealth but a white background meant you wanted everyone to know you had money, or at least you had money before you spent it, LOL.
WRT conspicuous consumption I was multi-monitor back to the 80s (aka multiple machine on desk) and CRTs were an absolute nightmare where a 70 hz monitor next to a 60 hz monitor made both unreadable or in some ways it was even worse to have a 60.01 hz VGA card next to a 59.99 hz card because then you'd get a magnetic interference crawlie that crept up the screen slowly like a visual hallucination. The tech giants in the linked article were not doing tech work (generally) as most listed people most were (generally) managers and as such having one monitor on a desk for gnatt chart manipulation and email and such was typical for managers of that era, even if the techie front line personnel had three (or more) monitors on their desk.
One of the most interesting interior design aspects of the CRT to LCD transition about two decades ago is my multiple monitors on my desk at home went from as far separated as possible to as close as possible due to no more interference. Roughly as interesting was the transition from 4:3 monitors to wide TV aspect ratios.
Blooming, for kids these days, is when the HV supply of a CRT is poorly regulated in a constant-power sense and changes in display brightness cause changes in electron beam current cause fluctuation in acceleration voltage literally make the screen zoom in and out a couple percent while under high load. The poor regulation was usually worse under high current demand, so you could "clear ; top" a black background and there would be no weird zoom effects but a white background might zoom flutter in and out as the content of the screen varied. Very annoying to have one window flutter a little because another had its content change.
Interference and weird aliasing problems showed up in vast fields of illuminated white background more than unlit black background. Retrace lines looked particularly awful on large fields of white. Yes there's a clamping circuit that SHOULD totally shut off the beam on vert-retrace but as you'd expect it looked awful on a $200 CRT monitor and beautiful on a $1000+ monitor. Its just not noticeable on a black background.
There was also a filtering effect, light backgrounds having terrible image quality, a tech giant of 2002 spent decades staring into mostly black background terminals so anyone who in 2019 would not be able to stand black backgrounds was simply filtered out of the pool of possible tech giants back in that era. If you couldn't stare into the abyss of a TRS-80 model III black background sorta low res CRT display for 40+ hours per week, you simply had to leave the computing field in 1981, for example.
The only times we used light backgrounds on CRTs was for non-text purposes (games) and very strange lighting problems (the hated glossy screen with a light source reflected into your eyes, perhaps a very bright CRT background would reduce the massive glare distraction)
To some extent USABLE white background on a CRT was conspicuous consumption in that it was unusable on a $250 monitor or a TV connected to a 1980s home computer but usable white background CRT meant someone bought a $1000+ fancy name brand monitor. Anyone could have a decent black background display regardless of personal wealth but a white background meant you wanted everyone to know you had money, or at least you had money before you spent it, LOL.
WRT conspicuous consumption I was multi-monitor back to the 80s (aka multiple machine on desk) and CRTs were an absolute nightmare where a 70 hz monitor next to a 60 hz monitor made both unreadable or in some ways it was even worse to have a 60.01 hz VGA card next to a 59.99 hz card because then you'd get a magnetic interference crawlie that crept up the screen slowly like a visual hallucination. The tech giants in the linked article were not doing tech work (generally) as most listed people most were (generally) managers and as such having one monitor on a desk for gnatt chart manipulation and email and such was typical for managers of that era, even if the techie front line personnel had three (or more) monitors on their desk.
One of the most interesting interior design aspects of the CRT to LCD transition about two decades ago is my multiple monitors on my desk at home went from as far separated as possible to as close as possible due to no more interference. Roughly as interesting was the transition from 4:3 monitors to wide TV aspect ratios.