The Parliament of Things is a decision making space, in which various stakeholders to a decision, come together (that is interact), in order to reach a decision. This space is better if it is represented in physical space in some form or other, but this does not necessarily mean a “parliament” in the traditional sense, rather it may mean a network of smaller spaces, temporary spaces, public or intimate spaces, that are combined somehow into a single cohesive decision making sense through the medium of the network.

The medium of the network is deliberately vague here. Yes, an obvious way to conceive of such a network of spaces is to use technology, the internet, video conferencing, projection, and software platforms to connect these spaces, but this is not the only way, and indeed high-tech real-time conferencing rarely works well, and is for the present a technology that would exclude rather than include the vast majority of communities in the developed and the developing world. Better, is that we consider, other modes of connectivity, using story telling, recordings, asynchronous communication, SMS, and other low-tech solutions.

“Things” are spacial, decisions are usually multidimensional and can be restricted to specific domains. It is useful, to represent these processes spatially, if only as a metaphor that makes the way we debate issues more intuitive.