Long Live Link-friendly Apps! Celebrating the Three-year Anniversary of the Manifesto for Ubiquitous Linking

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If you are like many knowledge workers, on a typical day you access over dozens of information resources. If you have to use search or navigate through folders to get to them, you’re taking a big hit on productivity. It’s much easier to access a resource by clicking on a contextually placed link than it is to search for it or navigate to it through folders. For instance, if your task list contains links to the resources (drafts, emails, notes, PDFs, etc.) you need to process today, then you can use your task list becomes a hub from which you can quickly jump to what you need.

Link friendly Mac Apps

This is only possible if you are using link-friendly apps. Those are apps that provide automation for linking, and if they support non-file objects, then the app should provide a “Copy Link” for those objects in the menu bar with a keyboard shortcut. That way you can copy a link to those items and place them where you need them. For files, you need to use a tool like Hookmark that allow you to copy robust links to them. Unlike file:// links, those links continue to work even if you move the files around (i.e., they are a bit like Finder aliases, but they are links).

Three years ago this December, 24 developers, professors and influencers from around North America published the Manifesto for Ubiquitous Linking. The purpose of the Manifesto, which is structurally similar to the highly influential Agile Manifesto, is to educate end users and developers about the importance of apps being link-friendly.

The original signatories were:

The Manifesto has been signed by many luminaries since its original publication, and remains open for signing.

Link-friendly apps

Many apps were link-friendly before the Manifesto was first published. Many app developers subsequently have made their apps link-friendly per the Manifesto for Ubiquitous Linking. For instance, Obsidian and Craft became link-friendly after their respective co-founders were apprised of the Manifesto. So the Manifesto is having an impact. CogSci Apps maintains a list of apps; the link-friendly ones on this page are marked with a 👍. Have a look and you’ll notice that there are link-friendly apps in all categories of software.

Psychological rationale for the Manifesto

To quote the manifesto:

To do great work with knowledge, one needs to focus on it. Deep work often involves integrating multiple information resources. The human brain has limited mental capacity (such as working memory). It evolved to be easily diverted by new information. Focusing requires more than turning off external notifications. Merely searching for information is distracting. For instance, consult an email app and you might notice an email, web page, file or other information that diverts your attention.

Using link-friendly Mac apps is also an antidote to cognitive aging. As we age, our working memory capacity decreases, and we are more susceptible to distraction. Using links instead of searching for information protects our working memory, and prevents distraction.

The rationale is further elaborated in a paper published in The Future of Text and in “On applying integrative design-oriented cognitive science to hypertext: a framework for cognitive productivity.” Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Human Factors in Hypertext (Article 2, pp. 1-2) [Keynote address].

How to participate

You can participate by

You will thereby be shaping the future of personal computing.