Phone numbers aren't useful or readable, so the machines that talk to each other use those and I just click "Mary" in my contacts list.

I don't think such a system would be difficult to put in place on the web right now. Linking is done with whatever gobbledygook URLs you don't feel like reading, and if you want to revisit a page, you bookmark it with an alias of your choosing.

EDIT: I should say that I think this is the workflow for >90% of web users already. If they don't just use Google every time.