Excessive Enhancement - taking care of the web

Are we being seduced by the animation and rich UI capabilities of modern browsers at the expense of the underlying platform of the Web?
The Web has entered a new phase in its evolution: The proliferation of a JavaScript enabled audience with increased processing grunt in their devices, better and more ambitious JavaScript developers, and users with an appetite for sophisticated experiences, all seem to be helping to move the web in a rich and exciting direction.

Good developers understand about graceful degradation, progressive enhancement, unobtrusive JavaScript and the like, so why are we seeing big companies building web offerings with little apparent thought for their impact on the Web?

We’ll explore this by looking at what the Web was, is now, and might become. We’ll look at examples of exciting user interfaces and sophisticated interactions. We’ll also examine some emerging techniques for providing rich user interactions without hurting the web or killing kittens.