Technically

A revealing look at how tech industry bias and blind spots get baked into digital products—and harm us all.

Pianist and composer Ethan Iverson follows-up his 2022 Blue Note debut Every Note Is True with Technically Acceptable, a far-ranging new project that presents two different trios—Thomas Morgan/Kush Abadey and Simón Willson/Vinnie Sperrazza—performing a set of striking new Iverson originals plus singular new versions of “Killing Me Softly With His Song” and “‘Round Midnight.”

Pianist Ethan Iverson is an accomplished improviser who also respects tunes. And jazz purists be damned, he's gleefully unafraid of pop music. With his former trio, The Bad Plus, Iverson alternately shocked or delighted audiences with covers of Nirvana and the Pixies. On Technically Acceptable he wades into even deeper waters by contrasting a classical music structure with jazz standards, and with more pop songs done his way.

Buying groceries, tracking our health, finding a date: whatever we want to do, odds are that we can now do it online. But few of us ask how all these digital products are designed, or why. It's time we change that. Many of the services we rely on are full of oversights, biases, and downright ethical nightmares. Chatbots that harass women. Signup forms that fail anyone who's not straight. Social media sites that send peppy messages about dead relatives. Algorithms that put more black people behind bars.

The full inside story of the technology paradigm shift transforming the food we eat and who is making it