The list of bookmarking affordances goes on and on. But why is it so long? Even taking the fundamental utility of bookmarking as a given, bookmarking behavior is surely a small fraction of consumption behavior. And if that’s the case, then why do apps uniformly prioritize the development of bookmarking features? Because the urge to enrich the Database of Intentions is irresistible.

For apps, bookmarks provide a way to capture a pure intention; pure signal. It’s because bookmarks are low-commitment that companies love them. Everyone knows that commitment is hard to come by. But hope springs eternal.

Wishes are vulnerable. They’re vulnerable to the whims of fate and the failings of willpower. But they’re also vulnerable to judgment. Every company that introduces private bookmarking — as an app or as a feature — knows the bargain it’s striking: the more protection I give, the more signal I’ll get.

In fact, Evan Sharp — one of Pinterest’s co-founders — explicitly acknowledged this tradeoff in his 2014 interview with then-Atlantic journalist, Alexis Madrigal:

The things people do on Pinterest are so precious: this is what I want, this is what I think I want. They’re not ever sure, they’re feeling their way through. It’s a very weird emotional state. It’s this very beautiful thing to me. And if you start loading it with commercial pressure, it could really ruin the core of the experience.

Sharp’s observation calls to mind a similar impression taken from an entirely different domain, articulated by playwright Annie Baker and shared with me by Jenna Wortham:

The way human beings speak is so heartbreaking to me — we never sound the way we want to sound. We’re always stopping ourselves in mid–sentence because we’re so terrified of saying the wrong thing.…We’re all sort of quietly suffering as we go about our days, trying and failing to communicate to other people what we want and what we believe.

To wish is to “feel or express a strong desire or hope for something that cannot or probably will not happen.” To bookmark is a tentative act, verging on fatalistic; there are no guarantees. And that’s why, compared to the other signals that comprise the Database of Intentions — The Query, The Social Graph, The Status Update, The Check-In, and The Purchase — The Bookmark can be frustrating. The Social Graph and The Purchase map the past; The Query, The Status Update, and The Check-In map the present. They’re accurate. They’re reliable. They’re sensible. They’re also limited. Past is almost always prelude, but it doesn’t capture the ways in which we’re willing to change.

By contrast, the future is fractal. And in their capacity to structure abundance, bookmarks are, too. The wish economy matters because it catalogs all of the possibilities we’re open to. In aggregate, the incorporation of bookmarks into the Database of Intentions gives companies new tools for persuasion. But at a personal level, the tender utility of bookmarking remains.