Talking About Talking About Things

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Abstract
The articles in this special issue on "talking about things" address very different aspects of conversations around objects in computer-mediated collaborative environments. Although the authors have similar goals, they differ widely in the part of the problem space they tackle. The authors choose different ways to address common grounding and shared understanding in their study plans and environments. The articles raise a paradox between the need to see things while talking about them and the lack of demonstrated success when doing so in CMC environments. When conversations include physical objects, a computer-mediated collaborative environment must be able to allow a representation and transformation of those objects in the conversation. The extent to which this is accomplished in a way that minimizes the loss of shared context and shared experience will provide the ability to talk about things remotely in a useful way.

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