What we need is a open standard for URL shorteners - where the shortener can publish the time-to-live of the URL, and other stuff (that I really don't know about, but I'm sure some netOS guys can come up with). This way they are transparent, and systems like archive.org and search engines can simply remove the layer of indirection in their systems. Of course, shorteners may not want that to happen, but there needs to be a way to gracefully transition to the direct link in long-term archives. Perhaps the system could even negotiate that time before removing the middleman.

Of course, services like Twitter could allow <a href> tags (I do not know if they do; I do not use Twitter), which would help a lot in allowing users to save space while posting links.