Friday, Decmber 2, 2016 • Page 3
Across the Hudson
The gift of the city
by DAVID ROGERS
Sophomore Mechanical Engineering Major
I begin this column before completing my mental return from Thanksgiving break, but the post-Thanksgiving shopping season is clearly already in full swing. I’ve been tempted to fade into the masses of people swarming the malls, but instead, I’ll share some shopping places unique to New York. First off, there’s Union Square’s Holiday Market. South of 15th Street, Union
Square is filled with red and white booths, many of them are one-of-a-kind vendors, from now until Christmas Eve. For my readers who live far away, there are plenty of New York-themed gifts like old subway pictures and maps, that you can bring home next month. There are plenty of artisan gift, jewelry, and accessory clothing booths at Union Square. Make sure to bring cash if you want to shop in Union Square. Booths are typically open from 11:00 a.m. until 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. Moving further downtown, there are a plethora of cool places to shop between 14th Street and SoHo. You can probably find almost anything in those neighborhoods if you look hard enough, so my description of the shopping scene is by no means exhaustive.
I doubt the Engineering Department is cool with students 3D printing gifts, but you can go to iMakr, a 3D printing shop at Allen and Rivington Streets in the Lower East Side. Simply give them the file you want them to print and wait for them to get the job done. There are a few other shops on Allen Street to check out while you’re there. If you have a relative or friend who’s into modern art and fancy household or office items, like catthemed clocks or office organizers that look like hedges, they might appreciate a gift from the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA. Don’t worry about making a journey 20 blocks away from PATH station territory; because MoMA has a small store in SoHo. Located at Spring and Crosby Streets, this satellite store allows you to stay relative-
ly close to the PATH while avoiding larger crowds near the museum itself. Recently, Nike opened their flagship store at Spring Street and Broadway. Their inventory should be pretty obvious, but their displays are fantastic and create a unique store theater. Some sneakers have towers of basketballs for their displays, others have glass boxes, but no merchandise has your average mall display. The displays seem to be a combination of those of an Apple Store and those of a small, unique clothing store. They even integrate technology into the store by having virtual environments to test out your shoes before deciding if you want to buy them. Be warned, though, Nike can get rather crowded. Now it’s time for my personal favorite - the cheapest stuff. Ironically, most
of the cheap stuff in Manhattan is located pretty far downtown, where the real estate gets more expensive. The most well-known, and my personal favorite, is Canal Street jewelry. It’s pretty much the definition of fake jewelry you buy on the street. I know some people think giving Canal Street jewelry is an ethical dilemma, but I think it’s fine as long as you don’t pretend that it’s the real, premium stuff that it’s supposed to look like. Get it as a joke side gift. Of course, there are plenty of high-end fashion stores in the Village and SoHo. They’re not really my cup of tea, so I don’t have much to say about them. If you or someone you know fancies them, though, you only have to walk on Bleeker Street or Church Street until you find one.
There are also plenty of typical department stores and electronics stores that you can find in any mall. The only one that really stands out (aside from Nike!) is the Union Square Best Buy. Marked by a huge clock facing 14th Street, it’s impossible to miss. Bonus for Best Buy: they have bathrooms. This Best Buy has a pretty impressive inventory for a one floor setup, you can find just about anything that’s on the Best Buy website in that store (thumbs up for that NYC efficient use of space). Aside from that, the only things really separating a department store or electronics store in the city from one in the Deer Park Outlets or Monmouth Mall is that the former is in a more open, free environment and involves bringing a lot of bags onto the subway as opposed to driving.
Scientific Curmudgeon
The rise of Neo-Geocentrism
by JOHN HORGAN CAL Professor
You are a born narcissist. You know you are conscious, and you don’t worry about whether others are too, because only your experiences matter. The world is a stage for the drama of your life. You are reality’s epicenter. As you grow up, your narcissism encompasses people in your family, tribe, even humanity as a whole. Perhaps you, personally, aren’t reality’s reason for being, but your species surely is. These assumptions come so naturally to us that for most of our pre-history and
history we didn’t question them. Religions reflect our self-centeredness, and science did too, at first. The Sun, Moon, planets, stars and entire cosmos whirl around the Earth, our home. Don’t our eyes tell us as much every day and night? It took courage as well as imagination, painstaking observations and rational analysis for Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo to challenge geocentrism. Their insights, met initially by incredulity and hostility, helped us escape our primal self-centeredness. Today we know Earth is only one of nine planets orbiting the Sun, which is one of billions of stars in our galaxy, which is one of countless galaxies in the universe, which exploded into existence 14 billion years ago. Our planet formed 4.5 billion years ago, and a few hundred thousand years ago, a split second in cosmic time, we appeared and assumed the whole shebang
was made for us. Call us Homo narcissus. Our eventual recognition of how minuscule we are compared to the immensity of space and time has been humbling. But that revelation should be a source of pride, too. We had the intelligence and maturity to escape the delusional selfregard and superstition of the dark ages. We earned the label Homo sapiens. But recently prominent scientists and philosophers have been propagating ideas that restore us—more specifically, our minds--to the center of things. I call this perspective neo-geocentrism. As far as we know, consciousness is property of only one weird type of matter that evolved relatively recently here on Earth: brains. Neo-geocentrists nonetheless suggest that consciousness pervades the entire cosmos. It might even have been the spark that ignited the big bang. Neogeocentric thinking has al-
ways lurked at the fringes of science, but it is becoming more mainstream. Here are four popular examples of neo-geocentrism: Information Theories of Consciousness. Claude Shannon invented information theory in the 1940s to quantify and boost the efficiency of communication systems. Ever since, scientists and philosophers have sought to transform it into a theory of everything. Information-based theories are all neo-geocentric, because information—definable as the capacity of a system to surprise an observer--presumes the existence of an observer. Quantum Theories of Consciousness. Quantum mechanics has long provoked neo-geocentric musings. Is the cat in the box alive or dead? Is that photon a wave or a particle? Well, it depends on how— or whether—we look at it. Quantum mechanics, physicist John Wheeler proposed decades ago, implies that
we live in a “participatory universe,” the existence of which somehow depends on us. Reality Is a Simulation. Descartes fretted over whether the world is an illusion foisted on us by a demon. Philosopher Nick Bostrom has revived this conceit, conjecturing that “we are living in a computer simulation” generated by a high-tech civilization. Physicist Neil de Grasse Tyson, philosopher David Chalmers and tech-titan Elon Musk have expressed sympathy for the simulation thesis, which is creationism repackaged for geeks. Anthropic Principle. As physicists lose hope of explaining why our universe is the way it is, they have become increasingly fond of the anthropic principle, which decrees that our universe must be as we observe it to be, because otherwise we wouldn’t be here to observe it. Modern proponents of this neo-geocentric tautology include Stephen
Hawking, Sean Carroll and Brian Greene. Neo-geocentrism’s surging popularity is a symptom, perhaps, of our era’s social-media-enabled selfinfatuation. But if neo-geocentrism bugs me, so do militant materialism and atheism, which belittle our craving for transcendent meaning, and seem oblivious to the extraordinary improbability of our existence. And after all, without minds to ponder it, the universe might as well not exist. I guess what I’m advocating is a simple acknowledgment that no theory or theology can do justice to the mystery of our existence. That modest agnosticism, it seems to me, is what Homo sapiens would choose. John Horgan directs the Center for Science Writings, which belongs to the College of Arts & Letters. This column is adapted from one originally published on his ScientificAmerican.com blog, “Cross-check.”
Technically Speaking
Ronald McDonald is creating a robot army
by MARK KRUPINSKI
Freshman Computational Science Major
The goal of a corporation is to maximize profits. So, how should a business go about this? The fast food industry has an answer: replace its workers with technology. Let’s take a look at McDonald’s: the quintessential fast food restaurant. Recently, McDonald’s has been
rolling out a concept which it calls the “McDonald’s of the Future.” Sounds interesting, right? The “McDonald’s of the Future” features an upgraded and more “gourmet” menu, a dessert bar, a specialized McCafe counter, interactive children’s video games, and food ordering kiosks. McDonald’s brands this as a shift from “fast-food” to “fast-casual,” but in reality it is a guise that allows them to take advantage of technology and save money by hiring less minimum-wage workers within their restaurants. Automation due to a new technology in any
industry isn’t a new idea, but it has yet to take off in the food service industry. In the 90’s, McDonald’s tried to replace its workers with automated kiosks but the idea failed to take off. Now, however, the technology and political climate (fast food workers fighting for union rights and $15 dollar/hour minimum wage) the idea seems more realistic. In 2016, people are more accepting of robotic technology being used in everyday society. They’re more comfortable to order, receive, and eat their food, all without talking to people. This is
key. The ordering desk is one of the last stands that prevents McDonald’s owners to fully automate their restaurants. Robots can easily replace the preparation and cooking end of the food already – why not automate the ordering and delivery? With the advent of robots within fast food, the staff in a single fast food restaurant can be greatly reduced. Instead of hiring multiple minimum wage workers to staff and maintain a restaurant, only two or three slightly above minimum wage technicians would need to be hired to ensure that the robots continue to work
properly. Robots can take care of food preparation, delivery, restaurant maintenance, and everything in between – all with far less error than humans. Additionally, they will come at a lower cost overtime (it would just be a larger outlay). The downside to this? Unemployment of unskilled workers – but that’s more of a political issue, not a technical one. Additionally, McDonald’s won’t care about the issue: they only cared about their nutritional issues after Super Size Me became a blockbuster hit. Workers aren’t any different. If this succeeds, which it (at least this initial
step) will, then how will it spread to other businesses? Automation is already in place for the manufacturing industry, but it is nearly nonexistent in others like the hospitality or safety industries. Could robots work as a safer and better security guard for sporting arenas? What about a robot giving the same personable touch in the hospitality industry? If robots are to become a part of everyday life, society will need to become more accepting of them. The technology is starting to get here, but the acceptance of technology – whether social or economically – is still to come.