Question: Don't kill me just yet, I'm asking out of pure curiosity.

Elements like `<section>, <nav>, <article>, <aside>` etc all seem completely pointless. Sure they make everything have its own little place (and seo'd)... but it **is** possible to over-organize things. There are some cases where things don't fit in any of the categories too. It also increases time spent trying to code these things. I just don't see any real purpose for moving to add these new elements.

What do we (developers and people who view the webpages alike) have to gain from adding them?

Answer: 
Have read of [this article](http://www.alistapart.com/articles/previewofhtml5), as it points out various advantages such as:

> 
> There are several advantages to using
>  these elements. When used in
>  conjunction with the heading elements
>  (h1 to h6), all of these provide a way
>  to mark up nested sections with
>  heading levels, beyond the six levels
>  possible with previous versions of
>  HTML.
> 
> 
> 

and

> 
> By identifying the purpose of sections
>  in the page using specific sectioning
>  elements, assistive technology can
>  help the user to more easily navigate
>  the page. For example, they can easily
>  skip over the navigation section or
>  quickly jump from one article to the
>  next without the need for authors to
>  provide skip links. Authors also
>  benefit because replacing many of the
>  divs in the document with one of
>  several distinct elements can help
>  make the source code clearer and
>  easier to author.
> 
> 
>
Allowing heading scope is the main benefit of `<section>` and `<article>`. See <http://diveintohtml5.info/semantics.html#header-element>.

Briefly: in HTML5, it’s much easier to mark up an outline of your document (which is useful for screen readers) without worrying about whether to use `<h2>` or `<h3>` or whatever (which gets really complicated when you include components in different places on different pages).

They couldn’t have done that with `<div>`s, because there are billions of web pages that have used `<div>`s and headings already, without necessarily intending heading scope.

Admittedly, `<section>` and `<hgroup>` would have been sufficient for this purpose.