Science of the Borg?

[KAL 9000]

I know that the Borg are cyborgs or something, but why do they have a Queen? And what is "assimilating"?

[SargeRho]

The borg have a hive-mind, steered by the queen. Assimilation is the process of converting non-borg into borg, it means 'to make similar to', in this case to the borg.

[Nikolai]

They have a queen to make utter collapse of their society simple to comprehend and something that can be squeezed into the space allotted for a single movie.

Assimilation is the appropriation of the individuals of a different culture and pressing them into the use of the Borg.  This seems to have been tacked on as the Borg were fleshed out, since when they were introduced, they had no interest in the Federation or its peoples -- only the technology represented by the Enterprise.  The idea of space vampires seemed like a more interesting threat than the idea of space scavengers, I suppose.

EDIT: I know about the title, but does this really belong in the "Science & Spaceflight" discussion area?  Seems more like Lounge material to me.

Edited February 5, 2016 by Nikolai

[Shpaget]

I always had the impression that large Federation ships had vast libraries, stocked with pretty much all the technological knowledge of the Federation. So, when the Borg assimilates a ship, they get all the knowledge with it. They also get DNA from the crew.

Since they, or some other species they had previously assimilated, have mastered advanced genetics, why do they need to further assimilate the same species? Can't they farm their own enhanced version of whatever species they already have and consider superior?

[Spaceception]

23 minutes ago, Nikolai said:

EDIT: I know about the title, but does this really belong in the "Science & Spaceflight" discussion area?  Seems more like Lounge material to me.

It could be if we discuss the hive mind, and cyborgs

Edited February 5, 2016 by Spaceception

[Tex_NL]

To get a good understanding of the Borg you should watch some Star Trek:

• The Next Generation: season 3 episode 26: The Best of Both Worlds Part I
• The Next Generation: season 4 episode 01: The Best of Both Worlds Part II
• Star Trek: First Contact
• Voyager: season 3 episode 26: Scorpion Part I
• Voyager: season 4 episode 01: Scorpion Part II

These are without a doubt the best Borg episodes ever made.
(There are several other great Borg episodes in Voyager but Scorpion I/II is the best.)

Edited February 5, 2016 by Tex_NL

[Evanitis]

Oooow, cybertechnology!

I love the topic, as it looks closer to the present available technology than other 'sci-fi magic' we encounter. And it has some very dark prospects. I heard about studies that suggests that the base of the technology is already available. Think of prosthetic limbs that's moved by neural impulses. That's a very basic application of translating neural impulses to digital data. The question is how complex impulses can we transcode, and if the process can be reversed.

Imagine if we could convert audiovisual sensory information to raw data and back. That's essentially the plug from the Matrix movies. There it was used to fake a reality and digitally exchange experience. That's dark enough as it is. But for example in the Shadowrun universe, it's used (among other things) as drugs. It can easily reproduce the effects of classic substances, but it's harder versions are the 'Better Than Life' chips. Imagine Felix Baumgartner's jump not just recorded by a go-pro camera, but by a 'simsense' rig that stores every sensory information, that can be relayed to any user's brain. Brrr.

One step further, and we aren't just talking about reading and writing senses, but motoric and congnitive functions. Have it done by an evil very practical AI, and we arrived to the Borg. The common borgified creatures are drones. Basically zombies, controlled by the 'hive mind' - I assume it's motoric AI control. The Queen (and the assimilated cpt. Picard in the series) are a step further - they kinda' keep their personality and creativity, so I assume it's a higher level of digital control - not a motoric, but a cognitive one. I always found the borg infinitely more interesting than anything the ST universe could come up with.

 

Now in 2010, I read about a prototype prosthetic eye replacement for blind people. It was big, monochrome, and had a resolution of 34x34 px. Maybe the technology failed or was a dead-end. I'm not the type of guy who goes into conspiration theories because the lack of further data. But if were a sci-fi writer, I'd totally imagine some government buying the project up to the last pencil to further develop it. For the betterment of mankind of course.

[GeneralVeers]

The Borg "Queen" is a plot device, and that's pretty much it. The Queen is a face to represent the Borg, to give the audience a reference. It's really hard to follow a conversation when the "person" you're talking to is actually the entire ship, and Captain Picard appears to be talking to an empty room. When Captain Picard is instead facing and talking to "The Queen" it's much easier to tell he's talking to "The Borg".

What is assimilation? Well, it's basically similar to, say, during World War II when Allied engineers snagged German fighter planes and dissected them to see how the Germans were building their stuff. If you find new ideas in there, you copy them in your own designs. If you find weaknesses, you build your new weapons designs to exploit those weaknesses. The Borg take you and stick you in their Assimilate-O-Tron 6000, turn you into one of them, and then all your ideas become theirs.

I found KAL 9000's choice of thread title amusing for that reason--the Borg don't have any real science of their own. Everything they know is taken from other species, and they have not one creative synapse in the entire Collective. They became so powerful by stealing everybody else's copyrights and putting all that stuff together in one giant brain composed of a few trillion individual brains connected together. God forbid the Borg should ever accidentally assimilate some guy who hums the Strawberry Shortcake song all the time, then the entire collective would have to listen to that crap every single day, and would probably suffer a system crash as every mind in the Collective went insane.

[Nuke]

9 hours ago, KAL 9000 said:

why do they have a Queen?

plot device.

also i think i read somewhere that the borg were originally intended to be insects. but the costume department said nope (they were still using practical effects back then, so cgi was not an option). they went to the hardware store and got some black plastic ductwork and worked it into the black spandex costumes. throw in a robot arm here and an eyepeice there. then the actors were painted plae white to contrast the black tech bits, and you get the borg.

throughout tng the borg had no centralized command structure. it was a pure hive mind. even locutus of borg was just a mouth piece for the hive mind. they knew such an esoteric concept wouldn't fly in theaters, so they invented the queen to act as the antagonist. voyager continued this nonsense and over used the borg so much that they became laughable. they could have potrayed it as a temporary coup in the borg power structure and gone back to the hive mind for the show. but the temptations of prop reuse manifested themselves and the queen costume came out of wardrobe.

as for assimilation thats pretty much the process of bringing an individual into the collective. this involves networking their mind to the collective and installing implants in their body (if you watch both parts of bobw you notice locutus is having new implants installed throughout the episodes) for whatever tasks they are to be assigned. in the classic borg the mind would be part of the hive mind and the hive mind could control the individual borg. first contact borg, assimilated individuals become drones and both mind and body would essentially be slaves to the queen. you might say that applied to locutus but i figure in that case his 'voice' was present but drowned out by the greater hive mind. first contact even went back to retell the bobw story abit, to insert the queen into that plot to justify her existence.

giving the borg a queen imho was one of the biggest mistakes in star trek no matter how good that movie was.

[Nuke]

10 hours ago, Tex_NL said:

To get a good understanding of the Borg you should watch some Star Trek:

• The Next Generation: season 3 episode 26: The Best of Both Worlds Part I
• The Next Generation: season 4 episode 01: The Best of Both Worlds Part II
• Star Trek: First Contact
• Voyager: season 3 episode 26: Scorpion Part I
• Voyager: season 4 episode 01: Scorpion Part II

These are without a doubt the best Borg episodes ever made.
(There are several other great Borg episodes in Voyager but Scorpion I/II is the best.)

you left out q who. this not only introduces the borg but this is where q starts taking on the shepard role. most people hate q but when you look at the whole series he starts looking like a not so bad kind of omnipotent being.

[GDJ]

1 hour ago, GeneralVeers said:

God forbid the Borg should ever accidentally assimilate some guy who hums the Strawberry Shortcake song all the time, then the entire collective would have to listen to that crap every single day, and would probably suffer a system crash as every mind in the Collective went insane.

Oh Puleeze! I had 3 daughters that sang that song all the time! That's nothing.

Now, the My Little Pony theme.....that's pretty bad.
The theme song to "Cheers".......oh yeah, that'll drive one nuts.....

[Stargate525]

1 hour ago, Nuke said:

plot device.

also i think i read somewhere that the borg were originally intended to be insects...

giving the borg a queen imho was one of the biggest mistakes in star trek no matter how good that movie was.

Yup, the theory is that the bug-critters in 'Conspiracy' were signalling the Borg. As it stands now, nothing's ever come of that particular plot thread.

Queenie, in my opinion, becomes a lot less of a thorn if you think of her as a default Locutus. Of the many damages that Voyager did to the Borg mythos, one of the things it made clear was that the people in the hive were still there. Her species number is so low, that it's possible she or her species are the driving force of the borg. They're a hive amalgamation; with small enough numbers, a strong enough personality should be able to overwhelm the rest.

Which is why I've always wondered what would happen if you could assimilate a couple trillion like-minded beings with the single drive of pacifying the borg; whether that would effect the global 'personality' of the borg, or whether they're safeguarded against that kind of thing.

[Evanitis]

56 minutes ago, Stargate525 said:

I've always wondered what would happen if you could assimilate a couple trillion like-minded beings with the single drive of pacifying the borg; whether that would effect the global 'personality' of the borg, or whether they're safeguarded against that kind of thing.

I think that already happened. They are so peaceful. All they want is to unify those unpredictable, potentially destructive, sometimes self-destructive multitude of irrational species and individuals for eternal productivity and harmony.

[Scotius]

If the goal is the ultimate efficiency, then why bother with keeping drones partially biological? As long as there are living brains etc. on board, the Cube still has to carry life support systems, nutrients, rudimentary medical functionality and so on. Now add to the mix the sheer number of species that were assimilated - and logically every one of them should require different kinds of food, breathable gases or even gravity. Some of those you can pad with implants, sure. But still Borg logistics should be a terrifying snarl of hundreds counterdemands fighting over who gets what when

[Stargate525]

8 hours ago, Scotius said:

If the goal is the ultimate efficiency, then why bother with keeping drones partially biological? As long as there are living brains etc. on board, the Cube still has to carry life support systems, nutrients, rudimentary medical functionality and so on. Now add to the mix the sheer number of species that were assimilated - and logically every one of them should require different kinds of food, breathable gases or even gravity. Some of those you can pad with implants, sure. But still Borg logistics should be a terrifying snarl of hundreds counterdemands fighting over who gets what when

Nah. Universal nutrient paste that works for everyone with slight variations of efficiency, and cubes which are predominantly a single species. In one episode we do see Borg creches, so they do reproduce. There's nothing to say they aren't doing crossbreeding experiments and such with the offspring.

[Majorjim!]

13 hours ago, GeneralVeers said:

The Borg "Queen" is a plot device, and that's pretty much it.

The Borg queen IS the Borg. She says so herself. All others are an extension of her.

[Stargate525]

2 hours ago, Majorjim said:

The Borg queen IS the Borg. She says so herself. All others are an extension of her.

And Gul Ducat is a good man. He says so himself. [Read: there's no reason to take her grandstanding as any sort of truth]

[Majorjim!]

Just now, Stargate525 said:

And Gul Ducat is a good man. He says so himself. [Read: there's no reason to take her grandstanding as any sort of truth]

Dude...

 In the context of the Star trek universe, her telling Data that she IS the Borg, means that she IS the borg. Questioning it is ludicrous. And what the hell does 'truth' have to do with it?

 She was the first. All others are an extension of her.

 

Edited February 6, 2016 by Majorjim

[Evanitis]

2 hours ago, Majorjim said:

The Borg queen IS the Borg. She says so herself. All others are an extension of her.

Dunno. I think the Borg is the Borg. They also say that themselves all the time. Having a part that coordinates the rest at a given time, what has enough conscience to refer to itself differently than the rest is enough to warrant what you quote from it.

But I wouldn't read that as 'she' -is- the Borg. Not in the same meaning as someone's brain could 'say' that "I am the human, the rest of the body is just an extension of me."

darn you English language, I order you to obey my will and mean what I mean

I always considered the Queen as an experiment. The hive-mind trying strange, alien concepts as 'individuality' and 'authority'.

Edited February 6, 2016 by Evanitis

[Stargate525]

3 hours ago, Majorjim said:

Dude...

 In the context of the Star trek universe, her telling Data that she IS the Borg, means that she IS the borg. Questioning it is ludicrous. And what the hell does 'truth' have to do with it?

 She was the first. All others are an extension of her.

 

Why is that ludicrous? She's species 125. By their classification, NOT the first. Learn your trek.

[GoSlash27]

Arguing over whether the queen Borg is *the* Borg or just a Borg?

I don't know whether to recoil in horror or grab my popcorn.

 

[Nuke]

oh look, the geeks are fighting, how cute.

to be fair what first contact did was forgivable, what voyager did was not. *dodges nerf punch*

Edited February 7, 2016 by Nuke

[GeneralVeers]

On 2/6/2016 at 10:07 PM, Stargate525 said:

Which is why I've always wondered what would happen if you could assimilate a couple trillion like-minded beings with the single drive of pacifying the borg; whether that would effect the global 'personality' of the borg, or whether they're safeguarded against that kind of thing.

Take a step back (in time, that is) and consider how the Borg got started--obviously they weren't always X trillion drones, however many their population is in current-day TNG. Somewhere in the past, a bunch of individuals, probably very few, thought "hey, let's hook ourselves together and all be one great big mind". And when they did that, they all collectively decided to run out and start assimilating stuff.

The real grist here is, the Borg started out as individuals with individual memories; the collective they formed still had all those individual memories. The Collective looked at itself as a bunch of individuals, and as this new Mind, and decided "yeah, this way's better". Over the course of its existence, the Collective has assimilated literally billions of people who are terrified of them--and once assimilated, those memories of "I fear the Collective" became part of the Collective. The Borg already see and feel the fact that they are feared and hated. Obviously they are not swayed.

But then you can't have a hive-mind as the Bad Guy if said hive-mind is that easily swayed from its destructive course.......

[Stargate525]

1 hour ago, GeneralVeers said:

Take a step back (in time, that is) and consider how the Borg got started--obviously they weren't always X trillion drones, however many their population is in current-day TNG. Somewhere in the past, a bunch of individuals, probably very few, thought "hey, let's hook ourselves together and all be one great big mind". And when they did that, they all collectively decided to run out and start assimilating stuff.

The real grist here is, the Borg started out as individuals with individual memories; the collective they formed still had all those individual memories. The Collective looked at itself as a bunch of individuals, and as this new Mind, and decided "yeah, this way's better". Over the course of its existence, the Collective has assimilated literally billions of people who are terrified of them--and once assimilated, those memories of "I fear the Collective" became part of the Collective. The Borg already see and feel the fact that they are feared and hated. Obviously they are not swayed.

But then you can't have a hive-mind as the Bad Guy if said hive-mind is that easily swayed from its destructive course.......

That's true. Though I imagine that the number assimilated is closer to trillions. There's a difference to assimilating them one at a time and in one big chunk... Suppose that you're right.

[GeneralVeers]

Ooh! Brainstorm! I just remembered Seven of Nine, she's the answer.

When Seven was first disconnected from the Collective, her reaction was one of terror. Not of the Collective, but of not being in it. She wanted to plug herself back in. She was assimilated at a very young age (something like five or six years old), and the Collective is pretty much all she knows. Probably a lot of the Collective's members are like that; they were either born into it or they've been in it so long they've gotten used to it, to the point where they don't want to unplug.