On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 7:30 PM, Mark Andrews <marka@isc.org> wrote:
Which requires that people type addresses in in the first place.
As I wrote, we're already part of the way towards people not having to do even that.
No they make finding a unique id easy by leveraging a existing globally unique system.
That too. But if Facebook *becomes* the globally unique system...
Web browsers already automatically fill-in one's email address if you let them.
Which you have typed into the web browser in the first place.
Web browsers can get the user's email address from the OS/email program in many cases. The cases where that isn't working yet (e.g., Yahoo) are problems easily solved by technology. Sites and browsers already have a protocol for changing one's home page. "Would you like your email to be at 'Google'? [Yes] [No]"
1 if you actually want people to get to you and not your competitor.
And when people can't remember or mis-type the URL, you think they get the "right" site all the time?
There is a reason people put phone numbers in advertisments rather than say "look us up in the yellow/white pages".
If there was a better system, would they still print their phone numbers in advertisements? Of your associates, how many of their phone numbers do you know? How many does your phone dial for you? How often do you find yourself glad someone called you first, saving you the trouble from entering their phone number into your contacts manually? Now get the phone talking to PhoneFaceBook or whatever, so the "first call" problem is solved. Do you get to Google by typing "google.com" or "64.233.161.104"? If only the later mechanism existed, would you be adverse to adopting a better one?
There is a difference between looking for a service and looking for a specific vendor of a service.
Sure. There's a difference between looking for me and looking for all the other people named "Ben Scott", too. Yet Facebook has resulted in people I haven't talked to in 15 years finding me. Facebook solved the personal-name ambiguity problem for them. It seems reasonable to suppose that other ambiguity problems are solvable as well. People used to copy HOSTS.TXT around until someone came up with a better scheme. /etc/hosts still exists and still comes in handy for some things. People used to put great effort into maintaining giant bookmark files in web browsers. Sharing bookmark entries was a great way to improve one's web experience. These days, bookmark files are still used and still useful, but their necessity is very much diminished by improved web search engines and browser history. Look for the trend in all the things I'm writing about. It's not about getting *rid* of domain names, or URLs, or email addresses, or IP addresses, or phone numbers. It's about people finding ways of *using* all those things without *knowing* them. Extrapolate from that trend.
As the person I was replying to said, DNS is unlikely to go away, but I'll lay good money that some day most people won't even know domain names exist, any more than they know IP addresses do.
People may not know what a domain name is but they will use them all the time even if they are not aware of it.
Isn't that what I *just* *wrote*? :-) Please try to understand my point, rather than setting out to defend the usefulness of DNS. I still run ISC BIND on all my servers if that makes you feel less defensive. ;-) -- Ben @ 209.85.221.52