iPad Launch Viewers Overload Information Channels

Today the Apple Tablet media crunch by Steve Jobs has created an enormous demand for information. We have become a swarm of distributed agent systems programmed to follow Jobs. “Distributed agent systems r(u)n by themselves…You set them up and let them go.” (M Crichton, Prey, p.500). We techies recursively crowded internet sites, and caused channel overloads? 

(see this blog: http://artsandminds.typepad.com/artsandminds/2003/12/five_stages_in_.html  

Watching the attempt to live broadcast the iPod via http://www.ustream.tv/leolaporte­­, I am struck by how quickly (in a matter of seconds) the ‘live feeds’ broke down into intermittent transmission. Viewers of this website were estimated and 100,000 or more, and that is only one channel.  I am watching the most rapid cycle of evolution/devolution I have ever seen.

 Consider that this event is hotly anticipated by millions of potential users. Consider that Apple must want to drive their desire and has arranged to do that by restricting our access to the information making us  beg for their advertising feeds. We fall face-first into the feedbag and are overwhelmed. Is the process of information overloading a goal of promotion and advetising? Is customer frustration the way to create demand? I believe that whether these phenomena are intentional or a function of information channels in general, they have becomethe a sub-context of the whole Apple event. The media spent much time analyzing the media because their shortcomings were so frustrating.