This is a somewhat compelling reason why people don't use URLs like they do addresses (that plus the fact that physical locations are "discoverable", so if you

This is a somewhat compelling reason why people don't use URLs like they do addresses (that plus the fact that physical locations are "discoverable", so if you know something is in the general vicinity of 40th street you can probably wander around a bit to find it). But I don't know if it explains why people don't understand URLs. Physical location addresses are no more complicated than URLs (with the exception of URL-encoded blobs in URLs, which are not usually human-readable). That said, I don't usually talk about this stuff with non-tech types, so maybe the average person does understand URLs more or less.