I was pitched an idea for a link bookmarking site and thought to myself, "Why would I want to save a link? If ever want to read something again I can just google a variation of its title and find it immediately."

Then I realized, I don't save music these days either. I used to download every song from LimeWire and meticulously curate my iTunes Library. Today, I stream mixes and pull up songs on YouTube. A permanent collection of *my* music doesn't even exist anymore. Same with video, etc.

I consume whatever is put in front of me that day, and save nothing. It's as if personal possession isn't a thing in the digital world. Why keep a copy of my own if the Internet will always have one I can borrow?

Do you relate? If so, what does it mean?

What you are trying to pass off as 'possession' seems vaguely familiar as 'curation' in the digital world.

When the world was an easy place with things being digital, then each entity occupied space, and hence we only possessed the once that were really good or important to us. Few reasons I feel we did this were:
1) Sense of 'ownership' and thus a stamp of approval that this is good
2) When you need to later look at it, it is in easy reach vs borrowing it from a friend the next day

In digital, the closest equivalent of that is Curation. I am intentionally not discussing DRM books and music because the whole idea behind that seems nonsense to me.
So when you bookmark a link, fav a tweet, highlight an fb post, you curate it. Save it.

Was actually going to email you on this topic after our conversation the other evening.

I was struck when you said [paraphrasing] that you don't use Spotify much because you don't feel the need to "own" music, because from my perspective Spotify is what's allowing me to shift away from owning digital music.

The main reason I "keep" digital stuff at this point is for annotation and personal discovery. I still have archives of links, text, and so on. In looking for one thing in those archives I often find something else relevant (when Google might not return the two items on the same page, or even for the same search).

But yes: I feel a decreasing need to "own" digital stuff with each passing year.

I personally save a LOT of things.
1) From random photographs to crazy interactions that serve as a base to draw UI inspiration from.
2) When I 'Add to Collection' on Rdio or Star on Spotify, I still considering it 'saving' it.
3) Links I save a lot of. Why? Because when grouped together in a different way, they give you a perspective that a single story never gave. The mind can only remember so many google search keywords.
4) Notes, thoughts, ideas and everything else in Evernote. I still cheat by carrying a field notes in most places.

This is the topic of a short TED talk that Sam Lessin gave in 2010. (It's linked below and only about 9 minutes long. Worth a listen if you have a free moment.)

He talks about lessons we can learn from how we play and applies them to the economic concept of ownership, including the benefits (on demand use, appreciation) and costs (maintenance, opportunity) of owning goods. When you buy, "you're buying use and future appreciation and you're selling liquidity value and optionality in terms of your life."

@Josh - You're feeling now why music is a perfect example of this. We're not sure whether I or anyone else will still like Gangnam Style next month (thus providing me liquidity), so why would I invest in purchasing it?

I've felt this way for a while about music and movies -- getting there with books. Links feel different to me (not that I keep them) but interesting connection.

Getting rid of "stuff" -- physical or digital -- feels good. Big exception is my own photographs, as my copies are usually the only ones. Those are a drag

It's interesting to think about this in context of services that track your history. For example Facebook Opengraph for music on Rdio or Spotify. I don't have a huge collection of MP3s anymore but I can go back and look at what I listened in the past.

Or how I've shifted from using Flickr to Instagram/Facebook for photos. I used to curate albums, now I just post everything to a stream. It's all there in my "history" if I want to go back and look at it—but there's less cognitive load than if I had collections or albums of photos that "pile up".