Think of cells (including binds) as just containers: when you call .get() (inside or outside a bind), you just get the currently stored value. Besides the container abstraction for its own sake, values also enable the scoping effect described earlier - if you have x.get() + y.get(), and x updates, you don't need to re-evaluate y (which in turn may be a bind - its body is scoped off so that you're not re-evaluating an entire sub-graph of the application). They're also necessary groundwork for smarter propagation strategies, e.g. stopping propagation if the value hasn't changed.