I'm not sure the grandparent post was claiming that there was a failure of HTML.

I'm hoping for a simplification of presentation on the Web as we move to mobile devices with smaller (physical) displays. I'm an optimist, so I'm hoping that people will start to present their own material instead of populating goobook and facicle as they currently seem to want to.

People often comment on the speed of loading of my vanity site; I just explain it has nothing other than text and images because that is all I need to convey my meaning. Others may need richer content and interfaces rather than documents.