The Operating System That Defines Yourself

I have had an encounter with Apple's operating system called Lion, which is claimed to be the world's most advanced operating system.  Actually I like the operating system on my phone much better, and I really loved Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard was sleek, fast, and friendly. It let me run of my old Intel PC software, and was great at multitasking. 

But when I got a new computer it came with Lion, presumably the King of the Jungle, and instead of serving me, it started to reorganize my life and asked me to think in ways alien to what I have been doing.  So now I am a lowly subject of the king and it doesn't matter what I think, I must submit to the law of the jungle.  I would estimate that the man hours I have lost in trying to find data of trying to save data and trying to replace programs that the king will no longer permit has been staggering.

Then I realized that each of us is an operating system which goes through upgrading as we learn new skills and acquire new tools.  We organize the world around us so that it is more "user friendly," and we have various ways the we categorize what we encounter,  We have our own tricks about memorizing where stuff is located and have our ways of retrieving what we need.  I guess I am OS_jvg.  It reminds of a famous quote from Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:  "The technology you are working on is the technology of yourself."_

I have been working my operating system that for a long time.  I have some features that I share with Lion and with Snow Leopard, but I also have many quirks and idiosyncrasies. I am not nearly as fast as Snow Leopard or as dominating as Lion, but I have tried in the spirit of not yet being a cyborg to be humane and user-friendly.

I wonder what role "routine," "habit," and "systematic" play in our personal operating systems. I once heard an expert in cognition say that our identity is based on the collection of habits and preferences we harbor and that there is really no such thing as some essence that defines who we are.  To this we've come.