In 1997, he started Ftrain.com, one of the earliest blogs. He wrote for Harper's Magazine from 2004 to 2010[3] and as of July 2023 is a regular contributor to Wired Magazine;[1] he has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, MIT Technology Review, and NPR.[2]
In 2015, he published a 38,000-word article in Bloomberg Businessweek titled "What is Code",[4] a "deep dive into the meaning, practice, culture, and business of software", and the longest article ever run in the magazine.[5][6][7][8] The piece won a National Magazine Award in 2016,[9] was included in The Best American Magazine Writing 2016 published by the American Society of Magazine Editors and Columbia University Press,[10][11] and Ford, together with Bloomberg editor Josh Tyrangiel, appeared on Charlie Rose to discuss it.[12]
Ford is the author of The Secret Lives of Web Pages first published in 2016, with an updated edition forthcoming in 2025.[13][14]
He is a co-founder of Aboard, an AI startup, and Postlight, a design and digital strategy consultancy that was acquired by NTT Data in 2022.[15] He served as an advisor to the White House Office of Digital Strategy during the Obama Administration.[16]