Things to talk about when talking about things by Steve Whittaker:

...reviews the existing research literature concerning support for talking about objects in mediated communication, drawing three conclusions (a) speech alone is often sufficient for effective conversations; (b) visual information about work objects is generally more valuable than visual information about work participants' (c) disjoing visual perspectives can undermine communication processes.

I read this paper awhile ago and have had a paper copy sitting on my desk for, like, a year because I want to refer back to it occasionally and paper has been serving the social function of placeholding for me. In an effort to take advantage of the 'outboard brain' aspect of this weblog, I've created a new category called 'Things I've read' (which I'd like to be able to find again) and I'm going to stick longer papers and reports that I have either already blogged or will be blogging as I go that I'd like to refer back to later. We'll see how it goes...