Think of how all the space movies work - Star Trek, Star Wars etc.  They ask the computer to bring up some information and either displays it or says it.  No fluffy clouds, roll-over animation or jQuery effects.  Just data.

And this is where I believe things are heading - the proliferation of apps, browsers, mobile devices and so forth has lead to a paradox - the demand for coherent technologies to deliver content, and a thousand bloody ways it is delivered now from the iPhone app to the linux text browsers.

So how would this work?  Well it's simple really - all you need is a data format with structured rules.  XML is a pretty strong candidate for this - it already provides a flexible yet human readable data structure, although for really efficient performance I think it needs some sort of compression and/or indexing on top of it.  There's nothing that can't be stored in XML - providing you get the data structure right.

And then there's the interface.  We'd just need an interface per operating system which worked to the data specification. It could work any way you want - but all content would be rendered in the same way.

Is that boring?  Yes!  But the web is about one thing - sharing information.  I don't want some design person herding me into one direction or another - if I want the address of an Indian's in Alnmouth, that's what I want.  Not pictures of sheep eating grass gently sliding to an image of a happy bus and some kids.  And a search box 3 page scrolls down.  Why should every website be designed differently, when they all essentially do the same job - displaying data?

And there you have it - the future of the web - Colin style.  It would work too - if everything was accessed in the same way there'd be no need for design, SEO or "user experience architect interface programmers" (yes, such a job title exists).  It all works the same way - I just need to sit down with a massive piece of paper and work it all out.  And then give it away for free.