I’m a pretty online kinda guy. I wouldn’t go so far as to give myself a geek label because that doesn’t do anything to improve my image with women, but if I lived on a planet with no women I would probably be called a geek. The funny thing about being a geek is that you tend to keep a lot of bookmarks in browsers scattered across various computers between work, home and the odd strangers house you managed to get some laptop time in. To the untrained eye – or less net savvy individual – this collection of links is just a quick way to find favourite websites (hence the term Favourites). (Right now there may be one or two of you tempted to nod your heads and say, yeah but that’s what they are. If you are, slap yourself, because this is wrong). No, bookmarks are windows into a geeks cultural identity; they will tell you what they like and don’t like, and what phases and fads they went through in days, months, years gone past. You can pretty much take all those Favourites links and work out what kind of person they are better than any psychologist armed with a completed Rorschach test.
This became very apparent to me during the week when I migrated all my own bookmarks from the seven computers I use with regularity, and the ones I had in an online bookmark service, all into another online bookmark service (called delicious.com for those interested). I had something like 550 links in total which amazed me to start with, and then amazed me more just seeing what kind of things I had actually bothered to favourite since 2002. I went through periods of being into linux, goth chix, 80’s t-shirts, 80’s music, Annie Lennox, digital cameras, cheap airfares to India, xbmc, crappy blogs *cough cough*, bittorrent, more goth chix, mmorpgs galore, cheap chinese blank cds, russian brides, paranoid cryptoware, and a whole lot more. I did wonder what some psychologist would have made of it all, especially if I had’ve done a Rorschach test with him and said all the pictures looked like vaginas.
I spent about 4 to 5 hours tidying all of the bookmarks up, removing all the ones that had become roads to nowhere, and were from phases I just wasn’t ever going to go through again, like applying for jobs with secret service agencies in every country in the free world (no kidding, I had tons of application forms bookmarked in their own category). In doing so, I got down to 173 quality bookmarks that I think represents the new modern me, and which anyone else would think represents someone in the new electro-bohemian class of society. It’s almost a fitting way to make an online introduction really; swapping bookmark collections to see how compatible you are, and whether or not you should make a date, or block that person to hell. Personally I know if I meet a girl with 100 Favourites in the “Cats” category, I’m heading for the door, and I’m not looking back!
So in the new modern online era our choice of bookmarks define us as much as our choice of furniture, music, movies and porn. All of which would be bookmarks in their own right. Which in the end, really makes my point for me.
Andy.
“if I lived on a planet with no women” – only a thought a geek would have.
On a more serious note, though, that’s quite a fascinating view. Especially since I don’t bookmark much at all… I could never find what I’m looking for in my own bookmarks, so I gave up and just use google. In most cases, that’s easier for me for finding content again that I read previously. Or I remember the URLs anyway.
For example, right now I’ve got about 10 bookmarks related to work. I’ve also got about 40 related to programming, most of which are articles that friends sent me that I didn’t want to read at the time but which seemed interesting nonetheless (I hardly ever go and actually read them. My loss, I know). I’ve got an additional 20 or so pointing to various unrelated things.
Could you tell I’m a programmer from that? Yes, definitely – even some of the areas that interest me. Could you tell anything about my personality? You could possibly guess that my sense of humour hinges on absurdity and puns more than breaking taboos, but a sample size of 4 isn’t statisticially relevant by any stretch of the imagination (sorry, I should correct that – some people’s imagination stretches to the point that they assume a sample size of one gives 100% certainty).
I’m not trying to contradict you here, I like your view on bookmarks. I’m just thinking that I’d fall into entirely the wrong category if someone was to characterize me according to the bookmarks I keep.
Howdy Jens,
You know it’s fine you’re trying contradict me!
Contradiction leads to healthy debate, and I like that kind of thing! 
Yeah you know, I’ve been giving this some thought since I wrote this entry, because before I collected all my bookmarks in one place, I was doing exactly the same thing as you – GOOGLE!
2002 is the earliest year from which a lot of bookmarks of mine are still in living existence. Back then, these links had a lot more purpose to them than they do now, search wasn’t as sophisticated and hence, links had more value. Particularly in light of how long it took to find a good link in the first place. My experience was it took longer in 2002 to find good sites than it does today. However the only way then to store a link was in your browser, which is/was very clunky when you want to use a different browser or take links with you to different computers. (Again not so much a problem back in 2002). Seven years on, search is ubiquitous (across many platforms and appliances) and very powerful. Finding links (and content) has become easy, so the role of the traditional bookmark has changed. With the advent of cloud computing, the next evolutionary step is for bookmarks is to move online.
What I do now is create dashboard views out of bookmarks with tags. The tag itself is a link which can be added to a portal page – igoogle in my case – to provide contextualised groupings out of my big list of links. By organising bookmarks by tag, and creating dashboards which are accessible anywhere I am logged in, it gives back the relevance to keeping a bookmark that was lost when Google started taking steroids.
Still it’s all personal preference really. I lived without bookmarks for a long time before consolidating into the cloud, so they aren’t the necessity they once were. But when you use them in a cloud service architecture they can be more useful than not having them.
Now if I was to play amateur psychologist – without the Rorschach test – your links would tell me that you are definitely a programmer. Most likely with a slight German accent, and hair that is long overdue for a cut. You’d have a preference for black clothing, and you enjoy beer… and technical discussions. Also you have your own website.
Amazing what you can divine from these little things really!
My ghast is flabbered! How did you find all that out about me? Magic!
Geeks can be sexy.