I feel this way about the history of technology / startups today

Source: a classic from George Kubler, an art historian 
"The Shape of Time"

creating and destroying; built flying cars & autonomous vehicles, now building roc.camera, writings: july.rocks

A sort of sense that the recombination of the past with the present matters more, than the discovery of new things, in and of itself (and a sort of always has been, attitude towards it, almost)

Maybe - innovation doesn't have to mean completely novel invention, but rather skillful recombination and re-contextualization of existing forms - again and again - and perhaps, it's sort of often been this way...

many a potential rich shaft waiting to be reopened in the patent archives