The Internet of Stuff – Doc Searls Weblog

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Just trying to make stuff happen

August 6, 2026

The Internet of Stuff

Routers for the Internet of Stuff

We now have an internet of stuff, at the heart of which are the distribution and fulfillment centers that have been replacing farmland and former broadcast transmitter sites near highways and airports everywhere. (The one above straddles I-65 in Whitestown, Indiana, northwest of Indianapolis.)

In The Rise of the Stupid Network, which he wrote in 1997,David Isenberg explained that the Internet’s design was to be stupid in the middle to put smartness (you, me, and the websites and services of the world) at its ends. This would prove to create what David Weinberger and I six years later called the World of Ends.

Of course, Internet routing isn’t stupid. It’s just smart about routing—and as little else as possible.

The same is now true for shipping. Some of its movements are easy to see when an Amazon truck arrives, when we find ourselves on a highway with more trucks than cars, or when we see containers being hauled on railroads or stacked onto cargo ships. But how the routing of stuff isn’t much clearer to us than the routing of the bits between my laptop and our screen.

I want to explore those routing systems. Because, as ends in the Internet of Stuff, we are about to become much smarter than ever before. And it will help to know how the middle works.

Shipping, Transport

Posted by:<br>Doc Searls

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One response to "The Internet of Stuff"

JTH

August 6, 2026 at 4:18 pm

1) I’ve long contemplated moving atoms vs bits

In my case, paying attention to moving food (calories)

2) road traffic : much long haul activity occurs at night (fewer pesky cars)

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