But nowadays TLD-s have little relation to the content category of the domain, look at the .com distortion for example. It's a valid claim that TLD-s are not really useful information. If you look at the current domain structure it's more like a file extension analogy.
The whole point is that this is only the case because of the TLD's position at the end of the root address, which has caused it to be perceived as a tacked-on additive for uniqueness' sake. If it had been placed at the beginning all along this likely would not be the case nowadays. TLDs very well could have been useful information; that's the point @awalton was making.
I agree to an extent, it would be interesting to see how the distribution of domains across TLD-s would look if it were reverse from the beginning, but I'm skeptical about a big shift. Country codes would still dominate local content and my feeling is .com / .net would be more balanced.
