I believe at least some of the pain points of "modern REST" mentioned in the article would be eliminated by wider adoption of proper FSM-based REST implementations, e.g. [1] or [2] (the latter is a spec and not a concrete implementation). This way, REST becomes a "template" for an "autonomous agent"'s logic, kinda like our brains are a "templates" for our personalities. Adoption of such "template" helps to establish invariants, which are crucial for large systems.

[1] https://github.com/basho/webmachine

[2] https://github.com/for-GET/http-decision-diagram/

edit: formatting