Artificial Infrastructures
By Michael J. Salvo and John T. Sherrill
Copy edited by Don Donahue. Designed by Mike Palmquist.
Artificial Infrastructures investigates how generative AI is reshaping the work of technical and professional writing across high-technology industries—from image analysis and documentation to medical manufacturing. Building on expert interviews and grounded narrative, Salvo and Sherrill examine the experiences of practitioners who have shaped the development of AI systems and who integrate AI tools into their daily work, illuminating the social, rhetorical, and infrastructural changes that follow. Rather than focusing on dramatic disruptions or utopian promises, Artificial Infrastructures attends to ways AI systems are embedded into workflows and reconfigure expectations for what writing and professional communication entail, arguing for a nuanced understanding of co-writing and machine-in-the-loop systems and offering both a critical lens and practical strategies for navigating a rapidly changing technological landscape. Central to this argument is a recognition that management decisions shape how AI is integrated into the workplace and what labor gets displaced. It is a timely guide for readers confronting the question: What now?
Table of Contents
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Foreword, by Derek N. Mueller
Chapter 1. The Current State of Artificial Intelligence in Writing
Chapter 3. Understanding Bridget and Kate
Chapter 5. Systematic Invention and Incremental Change
About the Authors
Michael J. Salvo is Professor of Professional Writing in the English Department at Purdue University, where he directed the Professional Writing Program from 2009-2019. Routledge published his book Writing Postindustrial Places: Technoculture amid the Cornfields, exploring globally competitive firms in the American Midwest (2018). He also edited Rhetoric and Experience Architecture with Liza Potts (Parlor Press, 2017). Michael is a founding member of Kairos and is the recipient of the Hugh Burns Award, the Ellen Nold Award, and the Kairos Best Webtext Award.
John T. Sherrill is a visiting assistant teaching professor at Michigan Technological University after four years abroad. For more than a decade, he has engaged with digital fabrication technologies, investigating emergent communities of alternative making and the evolving role of artificial intelligence in processes of pseudo- or mass-customization.
Together, they have published and presented research and scholarship focused on artificial intelligence at conferences in Australia, Europe, and the Americas over the last five years, both virtually and in-person.
Publication Information: Salvo, Michael J., and John T. Sherrill (2025). Artificial Infrastructures. The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado. https://doi.org/1010.37514/PRA-B.B.2025.2654
Digital Publication Date: July 27, 2025
Print Publication Date: TBD
ISBN: 978-1-64215-265-4 (PDF) | 978-1-64215-266-1 (ePub) | 978-1-64642-809-0 (pbk.)
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2654
Contact Information:
Michael J. Salvo: salvo@purdue.edu
John T. Sherrill: jtsherri@mtu.edu
Practices & Possibilities
Series Editors: Aimee McClure, Clarke University; Aleashia Walton, University of Cincinnati; Jagadish Paudel, Clemson University; and Mike Palmquist, Colorado State University
This book is available in whole and in part in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF). It will also be available in a low-cost print edition from our publishing partner, the University Press of Colorado.
Copyright © 2025 Michael J. Salvo and John T. Sherrill. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License. 194 pages, with notes, illustrations, and bibliography. This book will be available in print from University Press of Colorado as well as from any online or brick-and-mortar bookstore. Available in digital formats for no charge on this page at the WAC Clearinghouse. You may view this book. You may print personal copies of this book. You may link to this page. You may not reproduce this book on another website. For permission requests and other questions, such as creating a translation, please contact the copyright holders.