Efficiency & "Avoiding Reinventing the Wheel?"

I'm not entirely sure how to describe this issue, but sometimes I see builds on various DIY websites and... it kind of feels like "reinventing the wheel"? I saw an interesting clock design someone made but... we already have functional clocks.

(This is the project I have in mind, which I definitely find interesting in spite of this critique: https://www.instructables.com/Geneva-Clock/)

There's a place for art, but sometimes I feel these projects are just duplicating efforts needlessly.

There's the idea of the existence of multiple "linux distros" which might be a bit fragmented... it begs a question if a lot of them needed to be created? Aren't there are lot of "good enough" existing "efficient" solutions to some of these problems, like a distro that "just works" so other problems can be worked on and solved instead?

Do you ever feel like some use of technology is contrary to a spirit of progress?

(I say this with full awareness some "impractical" designs can lead to new practical applications, or there is the valid choice of different projects for "aesthetic" reasons. Still with these things said, some of these projects still seem "backward", in a way. To use the clock example... people struggled to be able to create a reliable way to tell time at one point. We have many automated clocks available today... it's a solved problem. It seems kind of "backward" to play around with all kinds of new ways to tell time, when we have an adequate way.)