From my point of view, the Petname System will work like magic on the SAFE Network. However, it works differently than DNS and does not solve the Paper Napkin Problem.
On-grid, it can do everything. There’s really no need for DNS. More so there’s need for “Metacquaintances”. @dirvine keeps talking about nature this and nature that. And I’m beginning to realize that nature is all relative.
There’s no one canonical reference to what’s what. It’s humanity’s error that we tried to give an absolute value to everything. It may just be the case that something decentralized cannot have an absolute reference. @dirvine stated that the individual client’s view of the network would be unique among every other client’s view of the same network.
For those reasons it may not in fact be possible to create a “Decentralized Naming System” that both prevents squatters and maintains a human-memorable aspect. There may indeed be room for services that provide index and even contact information services. (for non-1337 H4XX0R$)
Without using them though you may be able to wander the web namelessly, untracebly, and who know how far you can get. Maybe you can turn your own knowledge and contacts into your own net. Word of mouth goes far. These are exciting times.
P.S. If you’ve been following @fergish’s podcasts, in the book that the author he reviewed last week wrote, they spoke of “Crossing Houses”. Kind of like fraternities of the internet. It was an interesting concept. If you’d like you can read more about it here (and the quick reference is here Appendix 3)