How did the Borg come about?

[Duskofdead]

I think that they gradually evolved from an Earth-like capitalist society, eventually choosing to imbue themselves with cybernetic implants that over time rendered them less and less biological and more and more technological. The logical progression of this (and human society, if you think about it) was to pool all information, as opposed to knowledge, into one great link that their cybernetic implants could access. They could receive information direct to their brains, and somewhere somehow this evolved into a central hive mind, with information being shared without thought.

I do have a hard time wrapping my mind around the notion that an entire race of beings would willingly fuse their minds into a central hive, thus sacrificing all individuality.

Thoughts?

You have a hard time picturing it because you live in a society (a whole species, really) which embraces the idea of the individual and some degree of individual freedom (regardless of culture or government, this is true.)

I think the Borg evolved from a race which heavily embraced the notion of conformity, and recoiled from individuality because difference is viewed as various types of imperfection or inferiority. Imagine a society based on conformity where everyone tries to have the perfect physical appearance, the perfect physical body type, the perfect mind, etc. And using technology and artificial measures (surgery, implants, cybernetics, genetic engineering and genetic re-engineering) to achieve this for everyone. And ultimately you wind up with everyone more or less looking and thinking and behaving alike, the group mind thing probably came on very gradually. At some point both the culture and the technology had reached the point where people were simply "plugging in" all the time cybernetically (picture like modems built into your brain) to mainframe computers and "chatrooms" of other users all the time ANYWAY for basically everything.... to the point where ultimately it was silly to remain unlinked at all. It probably wasn't insidious at the time, especially if the society loved the idea of conformity and uniformity anyway and had evolved towards that over generations. The more you could directly link up with everyone else's thoughts, the more you could eliminate the things in yourself that were not like the norm/everyone else, until ultimately everyone was one group mind and individual differences were no longer distinguishable. At this point having achieved some strong degree of uniformity to an "optimal state" (everyone of the same high IQ, everyone's bodies fitting the same abilities and stature and strength via cybernetics, etc.) that's when something insidious happened and that little jump of reasoning occurred where now that they had perfected themselves, it was time to perfect all the unfortunate people in the galaxy who still wallowed in their differences and inferiorities. It is a gift really, we are giving them overnight something we've worked hard for over centuries or millenia. WHAT?! They fired on us? This is worse than we thought, these people are so ignorant of their own imperfection that they don't even realize what a tremendous leap towards perfection we are offering them and are barbarically attacking us.

This is for your own good.

Resistance is futile.

[Mikey]

OK, everyone, keep calm... Duskofdead will not attempt to harm you unless he perceives you as a threat... just keep moving...

JK, Dusk. That was very well thought and what you presented could be a very plausible scenario.

[ultron2099]

I dare the duskofdead.

Okay, lets look at a few facts. One V'Ger's cybornetic evolution as the source for the Borg. That's just wishful thinking. Want reasons? Fine. (1) V'Ger was far more powerful and technologically advanced then the best of Starfleet. But V'Ger could not time travel. Instead of traveling back in time to meet the creator, he thought he would just eliminate the carbon based life forms infesting the creators world. (2) V'Ger could have kicked Borg but, could have wiped the floor with species 7648 or whatever they were called and done it without working up a powersurge. Now, centuries later, this new evolution which has kicked around assimilating technology gets ITS harddrive kicked by the Federation???? One plasma blast used to eliminate life on earth was 1000s of times more powerful then the blast which nearly completely overloaded the Enterprises shields. Are the shields of the Galaxy class a 1000 times more powerful. Um, no. Heck, comparing the original constitution shields to the upgraded galaxy shields gives you a yield increase of less then 9 times!!

So, in conclusion, proposterous. More likely, the new asexual cyborg creation went off and explored new dimensions and higher levels of being like Decker suggested.


Now, to the biggest flaw in star trek cannon for the Borg, is in fact the Borg Queen. If the borg know only what the assimilate and can't learn with research, then all they need is there queen to tell them to do some research. See how this just doesn't work out. The borg couldn't figure out how to adapt there own nano probes to stop species 7482 or whoever they were because ... what, the queen forgot the word research in her vocabular as in 'go research how to kill them buggers.'

As for the Q being afraid of the Borg .... all based off of the statement not to antagonize the Borg, its more likely because the Borg tend to assimilate who you antagonize them with. Not because the Q fear the Borg storming the Q dimension. Q powers are not based off of technology like the Time Lords and the Dalek war, and since the Borg cannot assimilate a Q, little likelyhood the Q give a toot sweet what the Borg try to do in there dimension.

Now, on to how the Borg came to be. If we use the Vaudwar or however you spell their name as a benchmark, the Borg have been kickin around for awhile. But less then a milennium ago, they were still individualistic, if not cybernetic. So, the most likely escuse is a race that like the Bynars excepted and integrated themselves completely with cybernetics. Now, with that established, we need to take a step back and examine the borg's motivating drive.

To reach perfection. How do they achieve this? Assimilation of species. Accumulation of Science and Technology is the means by which they achieve their true goal, the assimilation of species in their drive to become 'perfect'. This drive can be seen then in its earliest manifestation, their ongoing bionic augmentation. So, question, how did this quest for self perfection of a species become the assimilation of others??

It could be that while researching new ways to enhance and perfect themselves, they came across a species that when they merged and combined the DNA and characterists with computer simulations they realized they became better then they originally were. This species may have been technologically advanced enough to offer some resistance, but could inevitably be conquered. Now, how do you conquer someone and merge them with yourself and yet keep control of who you've conquered. You brainwash them. And here might be were true tragedy came to play. Scientists working on a way to perfect an assimilation process have an accident. Those scientists become hive linked and driven by their united goal to assimilate this new species begin by assimilating there own species. Like a zombie movie this techno plague spreads forth until the entire species is assimilated. Then continue, they assimilate there first, then second and so on continuing with the basic drive of those first few assimilated. A unifying need to assimilate towards perfection is tragically born.


my hamster died. too much running on the tread mill fueling that though. me feel dumb and head painful now. not gooder. mommy .....

[Mikey]

Wow. Go get a drink a lay down.

[Bryan Moore]

I suppose I should have asked permission before hand, but inspiration struck quickly and I needed to act. I've used some of the ideas in this discussion post to write my Contemporary Issues: American Foreign Policy final. We've discussed overdependence on technology as a threat to America's future (which is why we watched I, Robot). Someone was insightful enough to mention the Borg in discussion, as sort of an off-hand extreme "what if" scenario, which made me then refer to this particular post. After showing the students the posts on this forum, I asked them as an extra credit bit on the exam to examine the likelihood of a "borg"-like hive-mind in the future =)

So thanks for the inspiration/apologies if this offended anyone. DITL was credited on my final, though =)

[Teaos]

[Tsukiyumi]

Oh, boy. Tell your students not to read anything I said...