Walk the streets of downtown Chicago these days and you’ll see them.  Ride the bus, the “L” or the Metra and you’ll notice them, too.  It’s hard not to: thousands of people completely transfixed by their smart phones and ear buds.  Perhaps you’re one of them.  I know I certainly am.

For those of us who love our devices (guilty, as charged) we know just how hard it can be to put them down and turn them off.  After all, they’re powerful tools for connection, productivity and entertainment.

But as commentator Al Gini points out in his latest video below, as liberating and connecting as these devices can be, they can also represent a black hole into which we descend - and the world around us disappears.

And that, he says, has its costs:

Al Gini is a professor of business ethics and chair of the department of management at Loyola University Chicago. He is also the co-founder and associate editor of Business Ethics Quarterly, and the author of several books, including The Importance of Being Lazy and Seeking the Truth of Things: Confessions of a (catholic) Philosopher.