Sure, it all depends on how you define a "blank slate". The whole world of engineering is a huge stack, and near the bottom are things like smelting iron and making plastic, up a few layers you have things like standardized screws, near the top you have things like kernels, databases, etc.

If all these things can be taken as a given, why would you not want to use them? I mean, yes, you can avoid some complexity by making a simple toaster, but the second the consumer wants things like "never burn my toast" or "personalized toast levels" you need to go up the stack.

That said, some IOT things are clearly lame ideas that should never have been made in the first place, but that doesn't mean you should avoid using existing technology.