My first computer was an Access Matrix that I'd play on at my dad's office. It was such a neat computer back in the day as a proto-laptop with built-in modem and printer.
The Beach Boys also unabashedly liked money. I saw The Beach Boys - what was left of them anyway - with one the original members talking on stage basically talking about how he still did touring because he liked driving around in a Bentley.
Both can be true in homes being unique while also functionally being like commodities. Whether a home or a spec home or tract home the pricing is based similarly to sports stats and no matter how one-of-a-kind a home is a mortgage on such a home can then be packaged with a bunch of other homes into a bond where bond investors will look at the stats of the combined homes and who the borrowers are.
I think of the recent study with raccoons how they like to solve puzzles. That was something well-known but not actually scientifically demonstrated and measured until now.
Recycling expensive media is a thing that was going on before the common era. Egyptian mummies were for instance wrapped in recycled papyrus. Look at the BBC wiping tapes, which when something is expensive to buy, economics can be the driver in erasing versus buying additional new media material. Even Neanderthals would recycle their expensive stone tools using the cores-on-flakes method to make smaller tools out of the old broken ones.