I don't think that GP was talking about the people who actually made web assembly, but about those who hype it. I'd be surprised if the former were not full of awareness of and respect towards the technologies that came before.

Your appeal to authority notwithstanding, yes I do realize that. I was not referring to, nor condemning the authors of WebAssembly for their work. I was proposing an answer to the question above, about why it seems like a lot of software development is re-inventing the wheel.