Voices

‘The Mystifying Triumph of Hope Hicks,’ and 4 Other Stories You Should Read

Here’s what you missed while figuring out that the U.S. and the UK aren’t so different after all…

The New York Times: Should Your Driverless Car Hit a Pedestrian to Save Your Life?

Selected by Jordan Teicher, senior editor

Here’s the question at the core of science fiction: Should the greater good outweigh what the individual wants?

The tricky part about that question is that there’s no correct answer. It’s more comforting for us to let humans make mistakes instead of machines, but that doesn’t make it the right answer. At some point, probably in the not-too-distant future, someone is going to have to make an incredibly tough call on how much control we give technology.

We often hear how driverless cars are right around the corner, ready to take us all over and prevent accidents, but this New York Times article shows why that may not be the case. Even if the technology seems great, what about the morality of the algorithms? How do you decide who a car should save in a lose–lose situation? People like to get riled up over internet privacy and adblockers, but this is actually a technological issues that has complex stakes.

This piece isn’t an op-ed, either. It’s a really interesting read with tight reporting and facts. Also, killer headline, New York Times.

The New York Times: Britons Ask Google: What Did We Just Do?

Selected by Jess Black, experiential marketing

Google is like a best friend who somehow knows everything and is constantly teaching you something new. But just like your real best friends, Google knows about your weird rashes and how dumb you truly are.

Unfortunately for the UK, it turns out that the population was not only uninformed about the Brexit, they didn’t even know what the E.U. was.

Sports Illustrated: LeBron’s Cleveland dreams no longer a fairy tale

Selected by Amanda Weatherhead, sales strategist

As a Clevelander, I spent the entire week riding an euphoric wave after the Cavaliers’ unbelievable performance in Game 7 of the NBA Finals. The day after the game, my Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter feeds were bombarded with hagiographies of LeBron and the Cavs.

Veteran SI writer Lee Jenkins does a great job of interspersing vignettes from the series, highlights from Game 7, and larger conclusions about the significance of LeBron’s performance, while staying away from maudlin, saccharine tributes to one of the greatest player to ever grace a basketball court.

You can look at LeBron’s awe-inspiring statistics, or the fact that this was the the first time any team had come back from a 3–1 deficit in a championship series, or even that this was Cleveland’s first pro sports championship in 52 years—but this win was so much more than the numbers. It was an honest-to-god fairytale come to life.

The New York Times Magazine: Can Netflix Survive in the New World It Created?

Selected by Dillon Baker, associate editor

Here’s the problem with disruption: Once a market gets destabilized, anything can happen—including the disrupter losing.

Will that happen to Netflix, which has almost single-handedly upended the TV industry? It’s hard to say, but this in-depth piece in The New York Times Magazine does an excellent job of analyzing the streaming service’s future from both pessimistic and optimistic points-of-view.

Like with all venture-funded tech companies that are disrupting entire industries despite running huge deficits—think Amazon, Uber, and so on—Netflix will eventually have to prove it can be a profitable business. But to get there, the company will have to make some difficult—and, dare I say, disruptive—changes to its business model.

GQ: The Mystifying Triumph of Hope Hicks, Donald Trump’s Right-Hand Woman

Selected by Ann Fabens-Lassen, communications manager

At first, I thought this feature on Trump’s press secretary was a sign that articles mentioning Trump in the headline gets three times more clicks and that reporters are getting desperate. But this GQ story is actually an interesting look at a 27-year-old PR employee who has, somehow, become a hugely influential player in global politics. Typical of the Trump campaign, every interaction in the article is bizarre and strangely entertaining.

Get better at your job right now.

Read our monthly newsletter to master content marketing. It’s made for marketers, creators, and everyone in between.

Trending stories