Of Avatars ,Adventures and Addictions- Is an Avatar the 21st Century's Graven Image?

This past week my Technology and The Future of Jewish Education course at Gratz  College came to a close. What a whirlwind ride, and as the famous Dr. Seuss quote suggests, " oh the places I went !" And what a heck of a lot of fun too! We learned to make Avatars of ourselves ( I made 2: one a morphed picture of myself and a second one of me as a cartoon character with a pet fox). If my newly acquired skills have been retained  past my short term memory, I am going to embed them into this blog post for your enjoyment :-) I learned how to make cartoons and animate them and used a program called "Second Life" to make yet another Avatar of myself to take a virtual tour of the American Holocaust Museum, which I highly recommend . Try a tour yourself at http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/kristallnacht.
I walked my Avatar to the cliff outside of the museum and tried to make it jump up into the sea below. Guess what? She wouldn't do it! There are two additional avatar programs  that could be interesting to explore as well: Timeless Jerusalem Testimonials, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHI8d3Aiir4   and Sviva Israel at www.svivaisrael.org  or follow this wonderful program that is a leading environmental education organization connecting people globally through environmental education, social  action and technology,  www.twitter.com/svivaisrael or ( @svivaisrael) .

Well, I am not really going to go into the details about the self preservation instinct of my Avatar, or about my virtual tour, but instead my thoughts  have progressed to the value of images that are made up. Are these Avatars the 21st century Graven Images? Do we actually worship modern technology? Is it addictive and harmful?

Exodus 20:4-6 tells us that we are not to make an image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath. Avatars are images of people. We don't worship them though, so I really don't think that we are breaking the second commandment.

 I do worry however about our children spending so much time in virtual games and gaming. Why? Although video games and gaming can be fun as well as entertaining, and educational, they can negatively impact a person's life when the enjoyment overtakes other life pursuits and  then impact that person's life negatively. They become additive. It is said with drugs, alcohol and other negative behaviors that the user "worships" the _____. Fill in the blank as appropriate. I don't think that the use of an Avatar is really going to lead to addiction, but for now I think that I am going to limit my use of them to educational pursuits.  No sense in worrying about "the other places" they may lead me.