OK, from a philosophical point of view, it doesn't matter what building materials you use. Practically, as you've said, it does make a huge difference on what's

OK, from a philosophical point of view, it doesn't matter what building materials you use. Practically, as you've said, it does make a huge difference on what's possible (no disagreements there) Say we have silicon chips now to build computers, which give us say an iPhone experience. Tomorrow, I have a new material, which can also be used to deliver an iPhone experience. From the experiencer's output pov, it is the same innovation. They can't tell the difference between Silicon chip iPhone vs new material iPhone. You may use any number of materials and in permutations/combinations to get a given output. An artifact is termed innovative, when the "whole system" can do something that people consider particularly exciting/useful/interesting/etc. I am merely questioning the author's notion of what makes an innovation (improved building material view vs whole system improvement view).