I have configured my browser to go to news.ycombinator.com when I type "hn" in its URL bar. The domain name could be anything even a b32 hash I wouldn't mind, I would still just type "hn".
Granted, most people do not bother using this feature, but it is also true that most non-technical people don't even bother with typing a URL, they use a search engine as a proxy anyway.
In fact it would be a good idea, ecologically, to have a system that educate its users to give their own nickname to website they visit often and use them rather than performing a search query. Especially if it is as simple as clicking a "bookmark as 'xxxxx'" with xxxxx being the default name of the service/website in your browser, with a TOFU principle :).
Although almost all users just use a search engine. Actually typing in domains is dying (very slowly). I still do it occasionally for things written "in the real world" but this is slowly getting replaced with QR codes.
The last main thing that I use domains for is verification (is this really "google.com"?) but even that is 1. Not effective (yes, I am definitely "goog1e.com") and 2. Mostly replaced by my browser doing the check for me (for example via my password manager which only fills in credentials for the correct domain).
The apparent dichotomy of either using a search engine or typing out the full domain is confusing. What I do 99% of the time is type two or three letters into the address bar and let the rest of the address complete from my browser history. Giving those two or three letters to google to doesn't seem like it would do anything to improve the process, it's just a default that browsers foist on users because Google pays the browser developer for it.
I stopped using qr codes when I realized how easy it is for someone to put a sticker over an existing code and send me to a phishing site. Certainly, I can do it super cautiously, but it definitely seems like an easy attack vector.
They can also put a sticker over the domain name, and it’s not necessarily going to be clear in the moment if mylocalrestaurant.co is invalid and it should be mylocalrestaurant.com instead.
I thought we just established that the names in the GNU Name System are not meant to be human readable, and that the human readable names are not "owned" by anyone.
So what is the point?
How does this system facilitate "discovery" when no one can discover your website by the human readable name you would like to assign to it?
It is important to distinguish the technical procedure of resolving a name with the namespace governance.
You could imagine a system where you manage your DNS root zone locally ("hyperlocal") and there is NO consensus on what it contains.
The DNS resolution mechanism could support such a concept.
It is only the de-facto rule of ICANN over the root zone what makes DNS names globally unique.
And IETF/Standards do not allow to diverge from this.
The GNS specification explicitly allows it. That is it.
It does not mandate that users must bootstrap their root using fancy hand-picked petnames.
In practice, a common set of root zone entries will very likely exists.
The specification does not mandate the governance.
There could be a world in which DNS names as we know them today are resolved using the GNS resolution mechanism with no tangible difference to the user.
Why wouldn't they be able to discover your site through the human readable name? They just wouldn't go to a centralized source of truth to find that name, but ask trusted peers for it. IIUC, it's not a huge difference in practice from how things already work, but the technical side allows greater resiliency to attacks from malicious parties.
Granted, most people do not bother using this feature, but it is also true that most non-technical people don't even bother with typing a URL, they use a search engine as a proxy anyway.
In fact it would be a good idea, ecologically, to have a system that educate its users to give their own nickname to website they visit often and use them rather than performing a search query. Especially if it is as simple as clicking a "bookmark as 'xxxxx'" with xxxxx being the default name of the service/website in your browser, with a TOFU principle :).