I liked reading Phil’s post about the word ‘Identity’. This is
one of the core issues surrounding the subject … the definitions and
understanding of the words. Without a common language and lexicon
it becomes very difficult to nail down specifics on anything!
Years ago while looking into Identity I came across an article that
discussed the origins of the word … and it was a real breakthrough
for me. From Dictionary.com, Identity is:
[French identité, from Old French identite, from Late Latin identit
s, from Latin idem, the
same (influenced by Late Latin essentit
in Indo-European Roots.]
“Being the same as” … so the two core thoughts in this are that it is
something that is derived from observing, and it is relative or
comparative. There is an observer who assigns you identity by
comparing you – or some aspect of you – to something else that is
known. I believe this is the cornerstone of identity.
On the way back from a meeting in Salt Lake this afternoon, I was
pondering the word ‘identity’ and the way it is used in the physical
world and the way we use it in the world of IT. Something I heard on
NPR set off this navel gazing–I can’t remember what. Coincidentally,
when I got to my office, I found this post from Tim Greyson on the living language of identity. And so, a post…If I ask my wife, kids, or neighbors “what is identity?” they
answer in various ways that I think reduce, at their most basic level,
to this: “identity the sum total of who I am…my uniqueness.” It
includes not only attributes like height, eye color, and so on, but
also their personality, hopes, and dreams–everything that makes them
them. One way of sussing this out is to ask: do identity twins have
different identities? We would say yes, even when we can’t tell them
apart.…