In metaphorical terms, the wheel represents humanity's foundational discoveries, such as those basic innovations we take for granted today.
For example, the simple act of counting. The process of a child learning to count by physically grouping objects mirrors humanity's original development of mathematics.
But in this context, the wheel serves as a metaphor for questioning established solutions and daring to reimagine fundamental concepts.
I just decided to take a different angle and feel that it also can be applied in our approach to education, for instance.
In my view, reinventing the wheel isn't that wasteful or redundant exercise we're often warned against.
It's an essential part of deep learning and genuine understanding or how we can grasp the elegance (or lack thereof) of solutions that came before us at a basic or deeper level.
Tesla didn't wholly adopt existing electric vehicle designs – they rebuilt the concept from the ground up, questioning many assumptions about what a car should be.
Also Google, entering the crowded field of search engines, succeeded partly because they dared to rethink how information should be organized and accessed.
I think one of the main reasons that people are drawn to reinvent the wheel is because we have an innate desire to understand things from first principles.
There's definitely something deeply satisfying about reconstructing knowledge for ourselves, understanding the heart of what makes things work.
Valid Criticisms
That said, I'll be remiss to not acknowledge valid criticisms of this approach.
Rightly so, critics point out that constant reinvention can bring about wasted resources and the risk of repeating others' documented mistakes.
I think this is especially true in fast-moving fields like software development or medical research, starting from scratch could mean falling catastrophically behind.
There's also the risk of what can be described as 'reinvention tunnel vision' – becoming so focused on rebuilding something that you miss opportunities to innovate in novel areas.
These criticisms actually help us understand when reinvention is most valuable and when it is just wasteful.
For the most part, when a reinvention is driven by a genuine need to understand fundamental principles or adapt solutions to new contexts, then I think that's a net positive as it could lead to inherently valuable insights and improvements.
The hard part is knowing when to stand on the shoulders of giants and when to rebuild the tower yourself.
In my own case, I'm always a bit skeptical on accepting things as they present to be.
I don't know, but it seems to me that we live in a world that's inherently layered with assumptions we rarely question.
And this has little to do with our current age of information overload and ready-made solutions.
One of the root meanings of "human" is to forget, as in the Latin 'humus' (earth) and its connection to humility - being grounded, returning to basics.
What did we forget, that I'm not so sure at this point in time.
Inefficiency Woes
Now, coming back to reinventing the wheel, how did this concept first emerge?
Well, one of the ways that this concept of 'reinventing the wheel' emerged was as a criticism of inefficient duplication in the early industrial age, when standardization and efficiency became paramount.
The idea of someone spending time developing already-existing solutions was seen as the height of inefficiency. So industrial pioneers like Henry Ford argued that standardization was the key to progress, and any deviation from established methods was viewed as wasteful regression.
Needless to say, this perspective has evolved significantly since then.
Today, we continue to recognize that mindless reinvention remains wasteful. Thoughtful reconstruction of fundamental ideas however, are mostly the main drivers of breakthrough innovations.
Blockchain technology, is a good example of that.
The wheel, it turns out, hasn't finished being invented, at least not yet.
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