This is a masterful history and a reminder that what we have now is just a quasi-frozen snapshot of evolving solutions. Is there any chance that an alternative (URN? IPFS? Dat?) will gain traction and resolve some of the shortcomings of the URL?
When google first moved search to the address bar they started the transition to using page titles as addresses. This is a somewhat sloppy way to go about things, but when I visit this site, I just type "hacker news" not the FQDN.