There is a particular kind of digital collection that can grow almost invisibly: the bookmark folder filled with articles that seemed fascinating, useful or important at the moment they were discovered but were never actually read. One article promises an explanation of a psychological phenomenon, another contains career advice, another could help with a future trip and another seems like something worth understanding “someday.” The person saves them all, intending to return later, yet the list keeps growing faster than it shrinks. Psychology suggests that this behavior may sometimes be less about consuming information and more about preserving possibilities. George Loewenstein's influential information-gap theory of curiosity proposes that curiosity emerges when people perceive a gap between what they know and what they want to know. Meanwhile, information foraging theory, developed by Peter Pirolli and Stuart Card, describes how people search for and collect information based on cues suggesting that useful knowledge may be nearby.
In that sense, bookmarking can become a psychological compromise: the person does not have time to explore the information now, but saving it prevents the possibility from disappearing. The bookmark says, in effect, “I may need this later.”
