Werner likens REST to physics, in that each is a model of some reality, not the reality itself. He writes;

Whether we use the REST model, or another model to be developed that appears to match it closer or from a different perspective, “the web” and other large scale distributed systems will continue to do “their thing”, whatever model we put on it. The distributed, decentralized, bottom-up, autonomous nature of the web, exhibits complex organic interactions, that are not driven by models or laws, just as that Nature is not driven by the laws of Physics.

Well said.

I would just add though, that there’s also a “metamodel” in play here that shapes our models; software architecture (and while Roy’s view is just one of several, the other views aren’t that different). Of course, this too is a model, and so falls under the domain of the same principle. But I suggest that that so long as this metamodel remains useful, most models of the architecture of the best behaved parts of a future Web, will be REST extensions, like ARRESTED or the (bulk of) the Semantic Web.

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