• by Jeff Einstein , March 23, 2005

We live and work in a media ecology and culture that -- like addiction -- compels us to sacrifice long-term, broader satisfaction to the narrow interests of short-term gratification, and thus quite naturally champions work over play to pay the escalating freight costs.

Eventually our addictions commandeer and consume all of our time and resources -- spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, physically, and socially. The self-defense mechanisms of the soul and brain -- including little things like faith, volition, and the ability to reason -- are vastly overwhelmed then conscripted as indentured servants to our obsessions and addictions, now more than ever on the accelerating hunt for quicker, bigger, media-driven gratification.

Viewed through the lens of recovering addicts (the only ones schooled in sobriety), return on investment (ROI) represents little more in reality than a repackaged, reintroduced, new-and-improved dot-com mission statement and rationale. Many of its biggest champions were and still are former dot-comers who once spent 60 cents of every investment dollar they raised (typically en route to bankruptcy) on TV and print advertising campaigns designed to promote the features and benefits of digital advertising and marketing over, well, TV and print.

The dot-com bust and subsequent industry makeover likely would have been more than enough to propel ROI to its current status atop the marketing and advertising food chain. But the attacks of 9/11 intervened instead with horrific but perfectly articulated arguments to raise the performance bar and drop expectations even further. Ghosts in the ashes suddenly menaced our dreams, so we turned for solace and succor to the relative safety and comfort of smaller visions and more controllable venues, the kinds embraced by the architects and evangelists of ROI.

Our current infatuation with ROI might have started out innocently enough as a perfectly reasonable (even if unconscious) response to the obsessive-compulsive behaviors that otherwise characterized the dot-com boom and bust.

But man makes plans and God laughs: The attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent War Against Terrorism intervened and elevated our existing insecurities and fears to suddenly iconic and color-coded alert status. Enabled both by the presence of monstrous events and a corresponding absence of faith, ROI strayed too far too fast and evolved instead into the cultural and business voice of diminished expectations, DROI (Diminished Return on Investment).

We now extol DROI -- not ROI -- repackaged once again and euphemized this time as instant gratification, even though we know that we do so at the expense of long-term satisfaction. Repeating the same behavior with full knowledge of, but no real regard for the very real risks involved is a signature characteristic of addiction. We'll talk about that next week, and what we can do to re-institute long-term satisfaction and quality in our lives both at work and at home.

What do you think?

Many thanks, as always, and best to you and yours&

Please note: The Einstein's Corner discussion group at http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/einsteinscorner/ is dedicated to exploring the adverse effects of our addictions to technology and media on the quality of our lives, both at work and at home. Please feel free to drop by and join the discussion.