The Borg

We are the Borg. ResistanceIsFutile. Prepare to be assimilated.

The Borg are some of the bad guys in StarTrekTheNextGeneration and StarTrekVoyager. The Borg is a group of billions (trillions? zillions?) of cyborgs, sharing a collective consciousness. There is no individuality: the Borg members have cybernetic implants that connect their nervous systems to the collective.

The Borg travel around "assimilating" other civilizations, meaning that they force those civilizations' members to join the collective and then adopt any useful technologies of that civilization. This makes them very fearsome. However, the heroes of StarTrek are able to defeat them because individuality, diversity, cooperation, innovation, and personal loyalty always end up being more powerful than stolen technology and unity of thought.

Outside of the TV series, the Borg are used as an example of what might happen to humanity if people get too much into wearable computers, mental implants, etc., and also as an analog of unthinking technological collectivism (Windows users are sometimes considered to have been assimilated by the Microsoft collective, such that the Slashdot icon for Microsoft stories is a picture of Bill Gates with Borg implants).

Also, many people equate the borg with a corporate mindset and culture.

I am Homer of Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is -- mmmm, donuts...
I am Popeye of Borg. Prepares to be askimilated!!
I am Pentium of Borg. Division is futile. Prepare to be approximated!
I am Fudd of Borg. Wesistance is futile. You will be assimiwwated!
I am Dyslexic of Borg. Fusistance is retile. Your ass will be laminated.
I am, uh, uh, Porky of, uh, Bor--, er, Bor--, er, Borg. Ahh, resistance is, uh, ah, fut--, um, futile. Prepare to be assim--, ah, assim--, ah, join the club.
I am JanetReno of Borg. Your ass will be immolated [to certain citizens of Waco].
"Bother", said the Borg, as they assimilated Pooh.
Hoo-di hoo-di-oo-di-doo Borg, Borg, Borg... (SwedishChef)

Controversial topic: The Borg are a true democracy. Each entity in the collective gets one vote in decision making. Compared to the Enterprise, which is a benevolent dictatorship (military hierarchy, to be exact).

Is this "One entity, one vote" view stated in any Trek canon, or is it postulated for sake of discussion?

Errr, no. The Borg are the perfect dictatorship. The Borg Queen is the only one with a distinct personality, all the others do her bidding.

[reminds me of the DiscWorld books, where it's said "Ankh Morpork has a simple democracy, One Man One Vote. The patrician is the Man, he has the Vote"]

Yeah, and everyone thought the idea of a Borg "Queen" was ridiculous. The perfect democracy is closer to the Borg's original portrayal.

If you have a HiveMind, you must have a Queen! Yeah, the idea was ridiculous, more so the lust of the Queen for Data (the robot). One example in which hot girls with love for cool gadgets is not a good idea.

The Borg Queen: is the end, the begining. The one who is many.

IMO and interpretation, is a personification of the collective mind. "The one entity, one vote", I think, still applies.

Happily, Earth has no Borg-like societies that feature dictators that could serve as a model.

True Democracy? Really? I thought it was more of an extreme socialism...socratic utopia, really, with lasers!!

I guess it depends on what type of hive mind we have here. Democracy has its own problems as well - something variously called the tyranny of the majority (Ayn Rand) or herd instinct (Nietzsche).

Ayn Rand? Really? John Adams used the phrase and the Ancient Greeks knew of it (and called it ochlocracy).

Question: If the 'BORG travel around "assimilating" other civilizations'...then how is it that they all appear to be from one civilization?

Partly because StarTrekClassic had low-budget special effects (and too many civilizations that were copies of ColdWar situations). So the creators invented a common ancestry for them, via an ancient terraforming effort. (Where "terra" was, of course, the name of their home planet, not Terra.)

And hypothetically because the Borg send your closest relatives after you, to ensure the local component of their hive consciousness knows what makes you tick.

In the beginning the Borg didn't go around assimiliating. It's true. Go watch the original encounter (Q Who?) again. No meation whatsoever. The classic line is absent. Of course the writers of First Contact were obviously ignorant of this fact when the Borg Queen tells us they've been assimilating for centuries... -- JamesHollidge

I feel somewhat aligned to mainstream fan thought when I say, that The Enterprise wasn't "official" assimilation fodder because the Borg are interested in civilizations, not individual persons or ships. At this point, the Enterprise is merely something to be dissected and analysed. Their attitude towards Voyager later on is because they have initiated an offensive on mankind, starting with the disappearing star bases and continuing with The Best of Both Worlds. --ClaesWallin

And I'd buy that if I didn't know to the very core of my being that's a post-hoc rationalisation. (And because the writers of Star Trek are not best renound for their continuity).--JamesHollidge

See: SevenOfNine, TheCollective, BorgiVerse

CategoryStarTrek (hah! -- just kidding), CategoryJoke, CategoryScienceFiction