I think it's even weirder that for so long I couldn't get a permanent phone number (thanks Google Voice!). I mean the phone network is pretty much the same as a computer network. They figured out how to automate the switching, but the phone companies never took the next step to automate the directory lookup and number resolution process. I've often wondered why there isn't something like dns for phone numbers. Probably because of myriad spam/trust/security issues. Those issues may be similar to the ones keeping physical addresses from making the leap too.