Also, looking at abandoned blogs and old photos of people lying next to their computers from the early 2000s is so interesting. It captures a time when people truly connected with their machines and made them part of their identity.
Hmm - rather than identity, I suspect it was more of a marketing trope.
I associate this genre of photo with the photo-shoots with Gates, Jobs and others. All the interviews and full page ads in the 80s 90s had variations of sitting/lying on desks, hugging CRT monitors or the classic folded-arms lean on a CRT from behind.
I don't recall old-school blogs doing this or really having author photos at all (photos on that bandwidth/hosting?!) but I imagine whenever a blogger was interviewed for print media they would lean on the "computer person" standards.
