AI Book Club recording: I Am Not a Robot by Joanna Stern
This is a recording of our AI Book Club discussion of I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything by Joanna Stern, held September 20, 2026. The group gave the book its lowest ratings yet, and much of the discussion is about why: so many of the experiences come across as superficial stunts with AI, rather than true engagement. In our discussion, some found the medical chapter to be the book's strongest section. Other topics: the question of whether you should fix a system before amplifying it, chatbots that give you the candid career advice your friends won't, school policies on AI and who tutoring actually serves, work threads where both sides are pasting from AI, and the line between removing drudgery and giving away the thinking. Read more »
Six new books in tech comm: a roundup
Six new books have recently been published in tech comm, and I wanted to round them up in case you missed some of them in your news feeds. The books include WTFM by CT Smith, Documentation at Scale by Andrew Etter, the second edition of Docs for Developers, Docs as Tests & AI by Manny Silva, Women in Technical Communication edited by Sharon Burton, and Technical Communication and the Discipline of Content by Rebekka Andersen and Carlos Evia. This post gives some brief factual details about each book, drawing on the jacket copy, with links, covers, and publication details. Read more »
Buying a car in the age of AI
One thing I'm not great at is buying cars. I'm incredibly indecisive, in part because historically I have regretted some of the cars I've purchased. Hence, I'm afraid of buying the wrong car, and so I vacillate endlessly to an almost neurotic degree. Also, buying cars is tough because you have a limited number of test drives — test drives require visits to dealerships and lots, and you don't have unlimited time and patience at these places. Read more »
Mastering API Documentation with AI (Sponsor)
Mark Wentowski is teaching his live API documentation course again this fall at docsgeek.io. It is his course, on his own site — separate from the API doc course here.
The fall cohort starts October 19: seven 90-minute classes, Mondays 8:00–9:30am PT, running through November 23. Recordings come with every enrollment if you cannot make a session live. New this time is an optional AI add-on, where you use Claude to draft API flow guides and OpenAPI descriptions, then validate the output against the live API.
Code TOMAPIS takes $250 off. See the full syllabus and schedule. Enrollments through that code earn me a commission.
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