> REST on the WWW only works because humans read and interpret the results.

This is very obviously not true. Take search engine crawlers, for example. There isn’t a human operator of GoogleBot deciding which links to follow on a case-by-case basis.

> I have yet to see an API that was improved by following strict REST principles.

I see them all the time. It’s ridiculous how many instances of custom logic in APIs can be replaced with “just follow the link we give you”.