2025 archives
The cost of speaking up: Thoughts on "The War on Words" by Greg Lukianoff and Nadine Strossen | Dec 6, 2025
The isolation and loneliness of tech writing may get worse as AI accelerates | Dec 4, 2025
Documentation theater and the acceleration paradox -- podcast episode 3 with Fabrizio Ferri-Benedetti | Nov 30, 2025
Recording, transcript, and notes for AI Book Club discussion of Yuval Noah Harari's Nexus | Nov 22, 2025
Troubleshooting build processes with a fix-it mindset | Nov 20, 2025
Review of Yuval Noah Harari's "Nexus" — and why we don't need self-correcting mechanisms for "alien intelligence" | Nov 15, 2025
The difficulty of tracking and interpreting AI usage labels | Nov 12, 2025
Why long-running tasks autonomously carried out by agentic AI aren't the future of doc work, and might just be an illusion | Nov 8, 2025
Guest post: Generative AI, technical writing, and evolving thoughts on future horizons, by Jeremy Rosselot-Merritt | Nov 6, 2025
Changing the AI narrative from liberation to acceleration | Nov 3, 2025
Medium CEO explains how AI is changing writing | Oct 30, 2025
Making it easy for people to review your changelists (Doc bug zero series) | Oct 29, 2025
MCP servers and the role tech writers can play in shaping AI capabilities and outcomes -- podcast with Fabrizio Ferri Beneditti and Anandi Knuppel | Oct 26, 2025
Recording of AI book club session of 'Hands-On Large Language Models: Language Understanding and Generation', by Jay Alammar and Maarten Grootendorst | Oct 26, 2025
Switching from Commento to LinkedIn for Blog Comments | Oct 12, 2025
Podcast: How AI is changing the role of technical writers to context curators and content directors | Sep 28, 2025
Two strategies to succeed when AI seems to be eroding jobs around you | Sep 27, 2025
Book review of 'Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI' by Karen Hao | Sep 22, 2025
Recording of AI Book Club discussion of Karen Hao's Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI | Sep 22, 2025
Defining bug zero and two obstacles: Reducing review time and gathering context | Aug 26, 2025
Recording of AI Book Club discussion about Kai-fu Lee's AI Superpowers | Aug 19, 2025
Why getting to bug zero is so hard | Aug 15, 2025
Recording of Coffee and Content episode: What's wrong with AI-generated docs? | Aug 10, 2025
Review of Parmy Olson's Supremacy — and the futility of chasing non-capitalist dreams | Jul 19, 2025
Productivity Experiments and Advice: Continuing the Journey with Slow Productivity and Meditations for Mortals — guest post by David Kowalsky | Jul 18, 2025
Will our next users be AI agents? The future of content delivery with Fabrice Lacroix, founder of Fluid Topics (podcast) | Jul 5, 2025
Why attitudes and experiences differ so much with regards to AI among technical writers | Jun 29, 2025
AI Book Club recording and notes for The Singularity is Nearer, by Ray Kurzweil | Jun 15, 2025
The problem with single-sourced docs when fact checking with AI | Jun 9, 2025
The allure of iterative improvement loops (AI experiments) | Jun 5, 2025
My first vibecoding project (AI experiments) | Jun 4, 2025
API quick reference guides (and the challenges of passing long content into AI contexts) | Jun 1, 2025
Notes and discussion for Suleyman's The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and Our Future + AI Book Club recording and transcript | May 17, 2025
Reflections on the WTD Portland 2025 conference | May 11, 2025
AI-powered Enterprise Knowledge Platforms: Fluid Topics Q&A with Fabrice Lacroix | May 11, 2025
API quick reference diagrams and my upcoming AI the Docs presentation | May 11, 2025
Speaking up and calling out BS when you see it -- some reflections on Jonathan Rauch's book The Constitution of Knowledge | May 3, 2025
I feel like I’ve seen the future today | Apr 30, 2025
New article added to API documentation site: Document360 for API docs | Apr 30, 2025
Notes and discussion for Jonathan Warner's More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI + AI Book Club recording | Apr 15, 2025
Book review of Jonathan Warner's book 'More Than Words: How to think about writing in the age of AI' | Mar 20, 2025
Book review of Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet, by Ben Goldfarb | Mar 11, 2025
I'm starting an AI Book Club | Mar 11, 2025
Countering AGI with superintelligent docs? | Mar 9, 2025
Links from around the web: vibecoding, 60-hour work weeks, smaller internet communities, ethical compromises, and expertise | Mar 2, 2025
Do developers need code samples in API documentation? | Mar 2, 2025
Fixing bugs without thinking, Recursive Self-Improvement, and the shift towards more complex tech comm tasks | Feb 24, 2025
Review of Divided Highways, by Tom Lewis — and some thoughts on techno-utopian disillusionment | Feb 22, 2025
Rethinking traditional approaches to release notes -- recording of WTD Australia presentation | Feb 17, 2025
Is AI eroding slow mode? Push-button solutions versus thought partners, and approaches to challenging writing tasks | Feb 9, 2025
Using AI with issue tracking systems (prompt engineering series) | Jan 26, 2025
My 2025 trends predictions for tech comm | Jan 5, 2025
About Tom Johnson
I'm an API technical writer based in the Seattle area. On this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, AI, information architecture, content strategy, writing processes, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation course if you're looking for more info about documenting APIs. Or see my posts on AI and AI course section for more on the latest in AI and tech comm.
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