The Traffic Guy: Perspective

If I had to define a cognitive system in the most broad sense, I would say that it is any system that receives information (input), transposes it into one or more representations, manipulates them in a meaningful way (computation- if you will), and outputs that information in a meaningful way. I don't really want to get into the specifics and the caveats, because I just want to discuss one aspect of these cognitive systems: perspective.

In a cognitive system, each player has a field of operation that concerns them.

• In a soccer team, each player has a position, and a role.


• In an emergency task force division, each member has a duty, a specialty, or a role in each situation.


• In a brain, each nucleus of neurons and even each neuron has a receptive field and a specialization of sorts.

Further, every member or cell of these system also has a specific position in time and space. That seems obvious- and it is- but it is important with respect to perspective.

The information that one member has about the system as a whole is usually quite different from the information atained by the other members, and also quite different from the shared information as a whole. This is, of course, a good thing because it allows for rich distributed computation to be done about different types and different ranges of inputs.

However, is the difference of perspective sometimes a bad thing? And if so, can it sometimes be minimized?

In a soccer team, one player may have open sights to the goal, but if the player who has the ball doesn't know that because his view is obstructed, he won't know to pass the ball to him. Opportunity lost.

This morning, I was listening to the Mikey Show, a morning show on FM 105.3. The traffic guy was talking about the traffic conditions and started off saying that traffic was looking great today. It went something like this:

Good morning everyone, traffic is looking fantastic today. There's really not too much going on to worry about. There was an accident on the 78 eastbound this morning, but it looks like that is clearning up quite nicely. South I5 is slow from Encinitas to Solana Beach as usual, but starting to pick up. The 8 is surprisingly smooth this morning. The only freeway with traffic issues is the southbound 15. It's packed from Valley Parkway to Via Rancho Parkway.

Now, I happen to take the 15 south to work, and I get on right near Valley Pkwy and exit about 2 exits after Via Rancho Pkwy. Obviously, for me, traffic is definitely not fantastic this morning. I could care less about the 8, or the 5, or the 78 for that matter. But the traffic guy said "traffic is looking fantastic". I beg to differ.

The problem lies in perspective. For him, he sees the overall picture. In fact, if he's not flying in a helicopter, he probably has a nice little animated graphic of a map of san diego freeways with symbols, and colored flow arrows representing blockage or lack there of. For him, if he sees only one red slow arrow on his screen, traffic is otherwise pretty damn good. "One red arrow? Not bad at all"

But his perspective is much larger than mine- both cognitively and visually. He cares about the 8 and the 5 freeways. I don't. He sees activity in the entire county. I don't. What this leads to is a contrast in system status. He feels that the status is good. I don't.

The problem gets complicated in that the purpose of the whole cognitive system of traffic reporting is to aid the audience (radio listeners). It's not so important to give the overall status of the entire system of transportation, because nobody in the audience cares about the entire system! They only care about what applies to them and their morning commute.

If I were in a hurry, trying to figure out which route to take to work, I might just listen to the first five seconds of his report and conclude that my ride should be fine. After all, traffic conditions are fantastic, right?

I don't have a great solution. After all, it is radio. It's just something that I've been thinking about this morning- how perspective in a system can sometimes lead to inaccuracies and misleading interpretations.