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Re:Why we don’t need phone numbers by anigbrowl on Friday September 04, 2009 @03:26PM (#805507)
I would be happy to see the end of (human-readable) URLs too. I think they're holding the net back the same way telephone numbers are becoming a drag on, er, telephony.
Re:Why we don’t need phone numbers by blasdel on Friday September 04, 2009 @04:44PM (#805655)
I fully agree, and it's already happening!

Average users have long-since stopped telling each other their phone numbers or keying them in more than once -- you search for the person on Facebook and their number is in their profile -- then you put it in your cell phone's contacts and never think about it again. With Facebook apps on some phones, you never have to see the number at all!

URLs are headed the same direction -- users don't type in domain names much less URLs, and DNS is not trustworthy, but Google is. Chrome's OmniBar already makes interpretation as a URL not the default when it is confident enough in its search results.

As an added bonus, the disappearance of meaningful domain names and URLs will hasten the death of "False REST" -- Hypermedia will finally be The Engine Of Application State!