During the Web 2.0 workshop I held today for my colleagues, we touched the subject of bookmarks (and, obviously, delicious). I pointed out 3 main limitations of the browser-based "bookmark" service:

• accessing from more than one computer (this is typical when you separate your home and office connection, and makes a strong point in a corporate environment 😉
• categorizing bookmarks by subject (a hierarchical folder structure can represent just one possible subject for each link)
• find relevant stuff, when it’s more than a few days old.

But all this, while giving excellent reasons for using an online repository, did not explain why I consider this as a service that belongs in a new wave of internet services, where social interactions are the distinctive feature. Then it dawned on me – just think bookmarks when you read books…

My books (which do not know that I exist)
are as much part of me as is this face,
with temples gone gray and the gray eyes,
the face I vainly look for in the mirror,
tracing its outline with a concave hand.
Not without a logical bitterness,
I feel now that the essential words
that express me are in those very pages
which do not know me, not in the ones I have written.
It is better this way. The voices of the dead
will tell about me for ever.

Jorge Luis Borges, My books (orig. Mis libros) – La rosa profunda, 1975

Got it.