Individual registration?
In the event of an individual such as myself wishing to directly register with ICANN as opposed to enlisting the services of a registrar, why would such not be possible, as policy framework does not expressly prohibit registration by individual directly with icann.org as no explicit reference is being made to necessarily having to enlist services as registrar as a matter of necessity.
For an individual to look up whether domain name has a corresponding IP address is fairly simple, i.e. click START, select ALL Programs, select COMMAND PROMPT and type nslookup whatever.com and enter whereupon ip address will be displayed.
Furthermore, provision should be made for additional alternative root structures apart from those which have been provided by non-authoritarian domain name suppliers being .xxx, .law, .sport as current options of .com, .edu, .gov, .mil, .net, .org, .int,.za, .ca, .uk, .aero, .biz, .coop, ,.info as well as lesser used .museum, .name, .pro. set a fairly limited scope given the few categories, thus provision should be made for incorporating additional root strucures at request of applicants, i.e. in registry options an additional optional root ending to suit individual specifications should be provided, subject to approval.
