Canonical versus descriptive in a performance point of view

First of all, some definitions:

Canonical = the shortest way to describe something and in some cases the reader dont even have to be able to do anything more than interpret the meaning of the compilation. Something like this article in Wikipedia
Descriptive = like it sounds, something longer and more understandable
Performance = in this context something measurable in time, in my case loading time of data and reading time in the information.

I have thought of all that happens on the net with more and more understandable links and text and less demands of the actual visitior having to use their imagination and intelligence to understand what's in front of them.
Its nothing strange with addresses of a page looking like this - http://hrahk.se/post/Raise-sales-by-leaving-your-customer-alone-for-a-bit-and-be-patient-with-him.aspx and long texts that are written so all can read and understand.
The question is, and here comes the point of the heading, is it performing at a good level to have urls (as an example) that are 2-300 characters long and a text that is so descriptive and detailed so it takes an hour to read through it when it could have been a page with a url with the lenght of about 20-30 characters (except the domain name) and a couple of paragraphs?

Today with the search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask) being smarter and smarter I ask if it is so necessary with descriptive urls?
The same goes for the information in the page, is it really necessary to have a text that your audience would understand even if it was half as long?

You see, it all goes back to leveling with the one you expect to visit (Levels a matter of experience or good education) and saving their time, ie perform good.
Everyone (not really everyone but many experts at least) says it takes less than a second to pickup a scent in information and either lose interest or keep reading.
The same goes for urls, if they are so long that it is hard to remember, then how good is it to use?

Ground rules, in my mind, would be that trust the expected visitor and use canonical urls instead of descriptive and keep texts short if you know you would waste their time and lose their interest else. Its all about performing better with low load time of url and page data and short reading time with key information.

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