It's also interesting to see that technology indeed moves in cycles. In the beginning, the web was intended as a data layer, where that data was interlinked doc

It's also interesting to see that technology indeed moves in cycles. In the beginning, the web was intended as a data layer, where that data was interlinked documents; but once it became popular (and commercialized), we built more elaborate 'documents' until they were graphically intensive for visuals' sake. Then to gain interactivity we fitted an entire framework for manipulating that document's structure through imperative code (DOM), drawing arbitrary pictures (canvas), making other requests (XHR), and now we're at a point where the browser proxies nearly every feature of the OS platform for use of a website. JS and WebAssembly aside, the VM inside the browser isn't even the new VM... rather, the integration point is the entire browser and everything that's inside of it, and this article predicts a future where we use an intelligent but headless browser to manipulate a page just to get some data out.