It will be like phone numbers where your area code for the rest of your life is wherever you lived when you first got a phone.

You mean like it actually is today with mobile phones?

This may be how it is in the States, but in the UK all mobiles phones start with 07 (other area residential codes start 01, 02 etc).

I always found it weird that the US numbering system assumes that mobile phones are static. Must be some weird technical debt buried somewhere.

The first mobile phone I used only had coverage in a particular area. It didn’t work outside of town.

just like mail you would have to get a new address. under my imaginary scheme if you wanted better you would pay for a domain. but everyone would always have a local address to use if you wanted to participate(not just consume) online.

As the article says... "This is considerably more difficult with email because of the huge number of companies and services we want to have our updated email address. It takes a lot of time and effort to change your email address and it involves the risk of losing access to some critical service. There are so many of these services in our lives that we don’t even remember who they all are anymore!"

Including a city in the domain seems like it unnecessarily complicates things. If the goal is to provide free access to a more permanent online "identity", people shouldn't be forced to change it when they move.