I, too, am old enough to remember monochrome terminals. I don't know if that makes me sad or proud. If you did not live through that era how would you know about that old tech? Cultural references? Responses to comments on HN? :)
That's because no one cared about the Internet back then. You could read everything interesting on Usenet, refresh rn, have a few new articles, and then...nothing.
The web was the same way, except that we could kill time looking for material for our one-page sites on deformed baby skeletons.
I don't much care for the color scheme, either, but luckily it only bothers me for about 2 seconds, thanks to a handy Chrome extension "Change Colors".