Jeff Einstein

Dad / Husband / Cat Whisperer / Outlier

I’m a father, husband, sibling, and friend. Also a widely published author and producer, and a digital media pioneer long ago turned digital apostate. College-free, I have no formal body of knowledge to defend, and describe my four-year high school career as the best eight days of my life. Been chased through city streets by angry mobs. Been chased through city streets by cops. Been chased out of two different countries by two different armies (back in the early 1970s when I still had one good knee) with a history of layovers at airports that lasted longer than most of my corporate jobs.

Perhaps because I've never suffered an actual career ambition, my professional life unfolded over the years as a series of accidental firsts, starting with Einstein's Computer Guides, the first major how-to book series on personal computers, and Einstein and Sandom Inc., the nation’s first digital advertising agency — both way back in 1984/85. Then came Room Service Hawaii, the nation’s first home-away-from-home cable shopping channel, in the early 90s. Returned to NYC in time for the Dot Com madness where — ensconced like an outsized Yoda at rooftop designer vodka parties — I held court and introduced Smart Syndication, the Internet's first ecommerce syndication network.

During my tenure as a VIP in the digital media world, I appeared as a guest speaker at countless digital industry events, seminars, and lectures, and was a featured guest in many dozens of print, radio, and TV interviews, including venues like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Money Magazine, Forbes, PC Magazine, George, Personal Computing, Red Herring Magazine, Anderson Cooper 360, and The Today Show with Katie Couric.

It wasn't until my early 50s that The New York Times referred to me as the Mick Jagger of digital media. Seemed to bear a faint resemblance to a compliment at the time, but now I think it was because — like Mick Jagger — I was the only butt-ugly old coot in an industry full of good looking young hipsters.

I went from digital media pioneer to digital apostate in 2004 — some years before Youtube and Netflix and Facebook and smartphones ruled the world — when I was the first to step out and warn against the rise of what we all recognize now as a default meta-addiction to all things media and all things digital. Everyone thought I was crazy when I sacrificed what remained of my digital media career to ask what happens to the quality of life when addiction emerges as the default rule rather than the exception. What happens, I asked, when every function of our lives is suddenly and irrevocably institutionalized by runaway digital scale?

What happened was an undeniable decline in the quality of life across all meaningful metrics: spiritual, social, emotional, and physical. What happened was the rise of institutional tyranny.

Empirical evidence of the above social phenomena is everywhere evident and all but indisputable. Now — firmly ensconced in my 70s — I’ve lost enough people I love, survived enough close encounters with my own mortality, and compiled enough regrets to understand that it's time for me to act. Time for me to step out once again. Time to teach others how to restore the quality of life for themselves, their families, and their communities.