Identity is Kernel

There’s a lot of paranoia on the Internet, but there’s probably no more and possibly a lot less than in the pre-Internet era.   While researching the subject of privacy, I found page after page of references to the same concerns most of us have.   What if someone found out my name, my address, my phone number, my medical records, my job history, my school history, my marital history, my…what?   What if someone did?   What would happen?   Believe me, before the Internet, if someone wanted to know about you badly enough, they could.

When I was a child, we were taught by inference that talking about your finances, marital problems, abuse, or any number of taboo subjects was simply ‘not done’.   When a child brought up any of these subjects, it didn’t take a budding rocket scientist to notice that when a room goes dead quiet on you, you’ve messed up.   We’ve carried some of this baggage into adulthood, and straight into a world that doesn’t value taboos like it once did.   This may be a very good thing.   Secrecy and taboos are anaerobic; the poison they foster cannot survive exposure to air and light.

By being more open, showing the world what we are-or what we’d like to be-we are establishing what we truly are.   This is identity.   By expressing what we think, how we feel over a period of time, we establish credibility by explaining to ourselves and others our core beliefs.   In the computer world, the very basis of an Operating System is called the kernel.   The rest of the system is built upon this stable base.   It’s not such a stretch to think of our identity as our kernel.

If someone knows who you are, can they take it away from you?   Not without your permission, they can’t.

Lisa Miller