You keep arguing about canon, but this discussion isn't about canon, it's about the feel of the setting as it has existed up until this moment.
"It used to not be like this."
"Well, it's like this now."
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What is the discussion about? Liking or not liking the direction the setting is going? Or that these things don't belong in the setting? Because one of those discussion points is reasonable. The other one less so.
Also, what the setting *feels* like to you isn't necessarily the same as what the setting feels like to someone else. This is a shared setting with players all over the world.
The feeling of the setting includes all the clutter from numerous sources and planes travelling campaigns. One minute you could be in Cormyr and then poof, you're in Gamma World. It's the nature of the game, for better or worse. An old Greyhawk module had players exploring the crashed remains of an alien spaceship. When you're talking about the *feeling* of a setting, all of these things merge together in the minds of many players, and a lot of tabletop play encourages that mindset.
There are inventors and artificers and marvels of engineering.
Once upon a time the Realms didn't have dragonborn. Now they do. The timeline has progressed, significantly.
