Long-term viability: telephone numbers as aliases

["Lloyd S. Etheredge" <letedge@postoffice.worldnet.att.net>]

Current naming conventions probably cannot be sustained if exponential
growth continues. Especially if people want near-reasonable acronyms in
their native language.

Most individuals/organizations already have unique identifiers
(telephone numbers). Why not make life simple and permit these to be
used to designate Email addresses or Web sites? If you dial directly
over the telephone, it's a standard telephone call. If you input the
number as an address on the Web, the connection is to whatever location
the individual/ organization has established as the default.

I'd hate to lose the charm of reasonable or near-reasonable acronyms,
especially if the organization is widely known by its initials (AAAS;
EPA; UNESCO). This would be a completely reasonable category to continue
and - like designer license plates - it would be completely reasonable
to charge an annual fee. But we don't try to base the assignment of home
and corporate telephone numbers - or the future of the world's telephone
system - on this type of awkwardly-constrained method. 

     I hope we can get a simple, user-friendly, system. Existing
telephone numbers aren't an exciting innovation, but I think they're a
good answer (& they are an accepted international addressing standard).
And, in the long-term, I think we all will come to appreciate the
savings in time and record-keeping.

     Best wishes for your work,

     Lloyd Etheredge
_______
Lloyd Etheredge, Director
International Scientific Networks Project
Policy Science Center - 314 Yale Law Bldg.
letedge@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu (Internet)