But that's not really what I want to talk about. We think of the Borg as a group consciousness, but are they really? Is the Borg Mind the totality of the units within the Collective, or does it come from somewhere else? I think it's the latter. . .

You see, it seems quite obvious that the personality of the the average drone plays no part in the running of the Collective. We can't be sure how many drones were taken by assimilation, and how many are actually born into the collective (like the baby in "Q Who?" - and a method that seems to have fallen out of favour). But even assuming a 50% split, that's billions of individuals who have had their brains and bodies co-opted against their will. Yet no sign appears in the 'overMind' that assimilation is a bad thing. Drones are apparently conscious underneath (sometimes) and are capable of having their memories and experience accessed, but the original individual remains powerless.

Therefore where does the consciousness of the collective come from? The Queen? Let's table that for a second (if not indefinitely - the whole concept of the Queen has irreversibly damaged the concept of the Borg in many ways). There have been no signs of any Borg Superbrains, unless there are features of the Power Distribution Nodes we know nothing about. The only other candidate are the nanoprobes - do they represent the true CPU of the Collective, with the drones reduced to mere parasite host bodies? Nanoprobes are resourceful little beasties, yet ultimately harmless until they enter a hostbody they can reconfigure to allow them a connection with the hive Mind.

This idea would also allow for the existence of a Queen or Queens. She would then become a more localised control node, an essential one in First Contact because originally there cannot have been more than a few dozen drones on the Sphere, and they would have been completely severed from the Collective during their temporal excursion. The main consciousness of the Collective could be embodied in the Queen, and easily replaced. In addition to the two we've seen, there could have been a third on the Cube in "The Best of Both Worlds" that we never saw - and all running a local copy of MS Borg Queen 95 or whatever (hence the 3-dimensional comment?).

(another point: my hypothesis that the individual Borg original personalities do not impact on the overall Collective can also be proved by First Contact. The SphereBorg were deattached from the Collective yet none of their original personalities (including those of assimilated Cardassians and Klingons) did not surface; and they would have soon been 'ouvoted' by ex-Starfleet Borg, yet did not waver.)

To summarise: something controls the Borg, yet it's not a group Mind that is a sum of the parts. It's not the Queen because she's replaceable (unless she IS just a software copy - we keep getting told how soulless the Borg are, after all). I don't think it's a never-seen Borg superMind because there's been no evidence of one, and such a control freak mechanism woouldn't send drones back in time with just software in command. It has to be the nanoprobes, mechanical beings that act by blind instinct until in sufficient numbers (across more than one host?) whose only motivation is to remake non-mechanical life in its own image.

(Maybe V'Ger did come from there after all. . .)

Thoughts?

------------------
Phase 1: Steal Underpants
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit!

-is each Borg ship a unique collective mind?
-does every cube have a queen?
-do the Borg reproduce?

Oh, the baby Borg in "Q-Who" might have been a normal baby that was assimilated.

------------------
"Forgive me if I don't share your euphoria!" (Weyoun to Dukat, DS9 'Tears of the Prophets')
Dax's Ships of STAR TREK
 

I had another thought just now. . . remember the Krell from "Forbidden Planet?" They developed mighty machines to bring out their subconscious minds, and perhaps that's what the Borg are - everyone's subconscious desire to control, to acquire and keep on acquiring. . . but maybe that's a little too metaphysical. The Borg as "Creatures from the Id?"

But: consider the Krell "Great Machine" What might their ships have looked like? We know they once travelled between worlds, before giving it up to explore the inner mind and artificial intelligence (much as the 2001 aliens are implied to have done by Arthur C Clarke).

------------------
Phase 1: Steal Underpants
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit!

------------------
Outside of a dog, a book is a mans best friend. Inside of a dog, it's to dark to read. Groucho Marx

Remember, the Borg are jacks of all trades, masters of none. They have the ability to do anything to a certain limit, after which they assimilate someone who can do the rest. I don't think we want to overstate the importance of the Queen to the overall operation of the Collective - she's a tool like any other drone. With the abilities of the full Collective within reach, the need for such centralized control becomes moot. But when circumstances require, the Queen comes to the fore.

But she can do more than that. She's an interface between the Collective and the assimilated - on a few occasions. One was needed to persuade Picard to speak for them - she failed. Another was needed to run the Borg in the 21st Century, and took on a secondary role as seducer of Data (for his codes, and that his distinctiveness be given to the Collective). A third was needed to persuade Seven of Nine for similar reasons.

Why then didn't one appear to negotiate with Janeway in "Scorpion II?" Maybe one wasn't on the cube, an no where near either. Maybe they wanted to keep the existence of a Queen secret to people ignorant of the events of "First Contact." Maybe with all the other stuff going on with Species 8472, she was too busy to work on a small science project - the Collective had been hit hard, and would need backup processors.

It seems clear there must be levels of individual intelligence within individual drones. Locutus was very aware, but was a failure and a weak spot in the collective. Anneka Hansen had had her original personality effectively wiped, however, as had the woman in the TNG novel "Vendetta." "Unity" showed that ex-Borg recovered in varying degrees from assimilation.

As some of you may know, I work in business-oriented computing. That means networks, and I tried to come up with a way of putting it simply. So, let's go to the analogy!

The Borh are a mainframe - drones are dumb terminals. But the full processing ability and knowledge store of the Collective are spread all across the network in mcuh the same way electrons are dissociated around an atom. The Queen is a control terminal that can only be active when made so from somewhere else on the mainframe.

One final question: have you ever stopped to consider why the Queen first appeared in two pieces in "First Contact?" Perhaps as purely localised CPUs they don't need to be ambulatory. As for why they look the same, that's because they're not 'really' even remotely organic. No way would the core out a human CNS and just leave the skin - Data was in fact snogging his own future, a covering of skin over a machine.

------------------
"Screw you guys - I'm going home. . ." - Eric Cartman

------------------
"You don't need a gun."
"That depends on your definition of 'save sex'."

from: 'Goldeneye'

 

1.) An organizing influence on drones who are disconnected from the Collective proper, (First Contact), or who are perhaps likely to become disconnected for whatever reason. (The Best of Both Worlds)

2.) Speaker for the Borg, ala Locutus.

In working on my upcoming Borg page, which will hopefully address all this, I've had a few thoughts. First of all, I dislike the word queen. It was never spoken in First Contact, and I only vaguely remember it being used in Dark Frontier. And I might be mistaken about the latter.

So, in fine treknological form, I've come up with my own awkward and unnecessary designation. What we call a queen is in reality a Collective Nexus Proxy Unit, or CNPU. In simplist terms, the CNPU can stand in for the entire Collective when such a need arises. And there are two main reasons such a need would arise.

1.) We have seen that, if seperated from the Collective, drones do not have the ability to create their own. For this reason, if a ship is likely to be seperated, a CNPU or two is sent along to take temporary control in an emergency.

2.) Whenever possible, the Borg like to conserve energy. Why send a fleet when one cube will do? Why engage in battle when the mere threat of assimilation might be enough to send a species into panic? And so the Borg send out their famed speeches first. But those aren't really invites to negotiation. When the Borg say "Resistance is Futile", they mean it.

However, there are times when they might want to be a bit more subtle. Dealing with Picard, for instance. Or Data. Or Seven. But the deal with Janeway didn't require any subtlety, because the Borg never intended to let Voyager out of their grasp.

So why can't the Collective deal with he second reason directly? It's my contention that a collective consciousness as the Borg finds it difficult to deal with such limited minds on their level. How do you explain the sensations of being a hivemind to someone who has never experienced them? The obvious answer is to assimilate them into it, which is what the Borg do. But another option is to use a go-between. A speaker.

As for the Collective itself, I'm going to need a bit more time to organize my thoughts on the subject.

------------------
"Just because you're floating doesn't mean you haven't drowned."
--
They Might Be Giants

 

(disengaging hyper-ventilation mode)

Anyway, that's a good story to end a season with! Hee Hee Hee... Kaboom!!!

------------------
And on that highly succesful burn I'm going into the polarbear-cage to get me some wallets
so I can get some beer-money. Adios! "Daaaeaehh" "Splash"

Chris Farley in SNL, bless his soul.
 

------------------
"Recombination, then Viacom; Safeway."
--
Soul Coughing
 

But then again, we've always been told that Borg cannot intuit and develop new technology - hence their needing the nanoprobes modified for them in "Scorpion II." Yet in "Omega" they're happily developing stuff. AND even taking account of primitive cultures' myths as part of a trail of investigation. We're never going to tie the Borg down when the writers keep messing things up. . .
 

If it was only a small group of ships, the queen(s) may have realized that if their goal was to be achieved (finding the Omega), then the lore was somewhat valuable. if the queens are at all self-controlled, as in not totally collective-ized, then maybe they acted without sanction from the collective when following the trail of Omega particles, and the queens eventually began to revert to the ability to create things on their own, without assimilation.

The cubes in this team that may have existed in the Borg's Omega project may have assimilated the ability to allow theh collective to develop new methods and technology, which slowly filtered through to the rest of the colletive minds, since there must be trillions of billions of minds, and each queen may have thought it necessary to decide wether the data on creativity was needed, since it took so long for the upgrade to filter to them, and there is no CPU toattach an order to just install the new config files to the ships operational ability folder thing... *LOL*

------------------
"She's never letting me forget, I've always been an idiot"
-The Verve Pipe

 

------------------
"Recombination, then Viacom; Safeway."
--
Soul Coughing
 

1) A humaniod species in the Delta Quadrant were working with nano technology possibly with AI. When the nanoprobes became self aware they infected their humaniod creators. This effectively assimilated them and the nanoprobes controlled them. There goal was to dominate and protect themselves by purifying the planet's species and assimilated its entire population becoming the Borg.

2) The nanoprobes were a living space borne race, they found the planet and assimilated its population since they'd need them to do work, build ships and so forth.

Make sense? I'm rather partially to the first one. I think the introduction of the queen was a bad idea.

------------------
"Let's make sure that history never forgets the name...Enterprise."
Federation Starship Datalink

The Borg Collective is a single mind made up of all the sentient beings assimilated into it. However, it is more than the sum of its parts. I believe that the "will" of the Borg is a self-aware entity that resides in the network made up of all those minds, but that is also seperate from it.

To clarify, let me say a bit about the origin of this intelligence. We know that the original Borg were a lot like us, until they "learned to include the synthetic". So if we take a trip back in time, we see these protoborg setting up computer networks everywhere, much like we're doing here on Earth. But these protoborg went a few steps further. How much better to take that cellphone and just implant it underneath your skin, no? Etc, etc. Eventually, you have a society in which almost everyone is connected physically to this great network.

And then, one day, something new appears. A new intelligence emerges from the network. This is what guides the newborn Borg, and organizes the Collective. This is what speaks through the "queens".

What do you think, sirs?

------------------
"Recombination, then Viacom; Safeway."
--
Soul Coughing
 

This then gives us a Borg Overmind which is spread across the whole Collective, loaded in the RAM rather than the storage memory that are the drones' brains. When a certain part of the collective needs to be cut off, or a more one-to-one dialogue is needed, it produces a Queen. Or tries out the Locutus option. Or just chooses an ex-human Borg who happens to be handy.
 

------------------
Elim Garak: "Oh, it's just Garak. Plain, simple Garak. Now, good day to you, Doctor. I'm so glad to have made such an... interesting new friend today." (DS9: "Past Prologue")
 

------------------
"Recombination, then Viacom; Safeway."
--
Soul Coughing
 

------------------
Elim Garak: "Oh, it's just Garak. Plain, simple Garak. Now, good day to you, Doctor. I'm so glad to have made such an... interesting new friend today." (DS9: "Past Prologue")
 

------------------
Outside of a dog, a book is a mans best friend. Inside of a dog, it's to dark to read. Groucho Marx

------------------
A-"Dippidy Doo." Q-"What forms on your dippity early in the morning?"--Johnny Carson

------------------
And on that highly succesful burn I'm going into the polarbear-cage to get me some wallets
so I can get some beer-money. Adios! "Daaaeaehh" "Splash"

Chris Farley in SNL, bless his soul.
 

------------------
Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
 

We also know that they speak for the Borg in certain instances where direct one on one contact with an individual is required. (First Contact, Dark Frontier)

I would guess that simple router functions are handled by other systems, since there is no need for such a device to be personally mobile. Of course, when circumstances call for more complex functions, (Again, in FC) then it seems the "queen" can handle them. But she seems more complex than a command relay system.

------------------
"Recombination, then Viacom; Safeway."
--
Soul Coughing
 

As far as acting as a nexus for a budding collective goes: I think that's probably true, but why does it have to be a nexus in a processing sense? Why can't it be a nexus in a routing sense, in which the development of the new collective is routed through the queen? Commands, which are simply most likely calculations of probability, necessity, etc, that are done by the computing power of the whole hive mind are routed through the queen and then disseminated to the drones. There's nothing about the forming of the new collective that suggests there has to be a CPU or that the decisions have to be made on the spot. The same is true of the needing to communicate with the individual. Just because they speak through one drone doesn't make that drone the CPU. Take Seven's case when she was elected to speak for the collective to Janeway. There's nothing in the role of 'designated speaker' qua designated speaker that makes it necessary for them to have functions outside of the normal drone. I don't think the case is compelling for either necessarily but in a minute I'll explain why I think the router analogy is more attractive with these things being equal.

In fact I think it makes more sense for the queen to be mobile when the primary function is that of a router. The further removed from the Collective (with a capital C) that any cube, etc is, the greater strain the directing of its information will present to that portion of the hive mind that is responsible for it, just do to the constraints of messaging across great distances and other physcial restraints we may not no about. Some amount of independent thought might be necessary but that may be more of a 'spinal' reflex ie, your spine intercepts pain messages and commands a reflex that pulls you away from the fire rather than waiting for the signal to go all the way to the brain and back, Borg drones likely have something equivalent. Plus, if we accept that in FC the queen wasn't going to stop with just destroying the E but was going to continue with the assimilation of Earth, and the AQ then it makes sense that you would send a new router to develop the network connections necessary to maintain the flow of information to the rest of the hive.

The real advantage of the router analogy over the CPU is that it preserves the Collective consciousness. If we take the CPU analogy we are by defintion going to have to accept some focus point of the Collective. With the router analogy we can at the very least accept that the Collective is non-focused with each router/queen disseminating information to the overall hive so that it can be computed and re-disseminated. The router analogy prevents the problems of needing a central Overmind by allowing the flow of information to be restricted simply by 'coding' or prioritzing. The router would still have to designate the priority but that represents a low amount of 'centralized' processing as opposed to the high amount the CPU analogy needs.

It presents us with a picture of the Borg as being like the internet, a picture which does two things: One, it makes the Borg more thematically attractive from a pure creative standpoint (the future of our society in a dystopian sort of way) and; Two, maintains the cohesivness of the idea of the Collective. We may not be able to makes sense of how such a purely nebulous Collective consciousness might work but we can't even figure out our own consciousness and at least this way we have a 'the whole is bigger than the sum' thing.

------------------
Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
 

No one on this thread, so far as I can tell, is suggesting that the "queen" is a wholely independant entity. It's just that she does more than simply route Borg commands around. She speaks for the Borg, and that implies that the Collective sinks a bit more of it's total knowledge into her.

------------------
"Recombination, then Viacom; Safeway."
--
Soul Coughing
 

What I'm saying, though, is that just because of the functions we've seen her perform don't jump to the conclusion that they've centralized or 'sunk' more of their knowledge into her. She may just have more access than the standard drone without being more centralized, which, in my mind, preserves the Collective (and all of their spookiness, fear, alienness, etc) a little better. Keeps them more interesting as it were.

------------------
Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
 

------------------
"Recombination, then Viacom; Safeway."
--
Soul Coughing
 

If you don't like the router bit, what about a spinal cord? Queens can override certain things rather than wait for them to go to the whole Collective but they are still without any centralized processing powers?

Dunno, just like the Borg and trying to preserve some of their mystique.

------------------
Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
 

I don't think "queens" exist in the Collective until they are needed. We only see them in special circumstances. They are not a permenant part of the decision making process. The only time they are required to take on such a role is when a small group of Borg are cut off from the Collective, and an organizing influence is required to keep their much smaller hivemind from fragmenting.

------------------
"Recombination, then Viacom; Safeway."
--
Soul Coughing
 

Here's another one. How could 7of9 know about the Enterprise, and events in First Contact? That whole group of Borg were in the distant past, and were cut off from the collective, and didn't make contact? Or did I missunderstand, and she just knew about the second Borg attack on Earth, and NOT about the events in the past?

------------------
Outside of a dog, a book is a mans best friend. Inside of a dog, it's to dark to read. Groucho Marx

$

$

$

$

Ugh, I think it only makes things worse to say they are only created when they are needed. In that case why did we see the Queen in Dark Frontier? If they're that special you come up with a whole slew of new problems. And Seven seemed to recognize the existence of the Queen, or at least expected her.

I just think having them a permanent part of the hardware makes more sense. But that could be my vision of what a Collective Consciousness would entail. Which is probably another thread.

Off for the weekend now.

------------------
Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
 

Of course, I think that any drone can probably be invested with such duties if need be, ala Seven in "Scorpion". (Though it is possible that Seven was some sort of higher level router to begin with. Depends on what a tertiary adjunct is.)

------------------
"Recombination, then Viacom; Safeway."
--
Soul Coughing
 

------------------
Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
 

I don't think that the Collective as a whole can "dumb down" enough to have a meaningful conversation with the likes of us. We're too far below it. Hence the use of a proxy.

As for the "queen" being something created in the moment, I'm not exactly trying to say that. I think there are a number of them out there, sent out when needed. And I'm not denying that they have other uses. Merely that they're anything more than another tool of the Collective.

------------------
"And much of Madness, and more of Sin, and Horror the soul of the plot."
--
The Conqueror Worm, by Edgar Allan Poe
 

I don't think it's any bigger deal for the Collective to talk to an individual than it is for a Vulcan to talk to a Human. It's all alien (or Greek) to me.

If the Collective were trying to talk to an individual drone then the brain cell thing would work fine. But as it is they're relating to something external, so whether that external consciousness is individual or collective doesn't really matter. The gap is pretty much the same. The gap when dealing with an individual may seem more insignificant (in terms of the individual's ability) for the Collective, the motives may seem petty, (in short they may not like dealing with individuals) etc, but the actual relation isn't going to be that different. If they were dealing with another Collective consciousness it wouldn't be any different. The implicit assumption behind any belief that it would be easier for them is that any other collective consciousness would be essentially Borg-like. But that may not be the case, it could be a dream consciousness (similar to aliens in one Voy. episode) and not a hive-mind that centers around pure mathematical perspectives (efficiency, probability, etc). If that other collective consciousness is like the Borg only in that it is collective then why would relating to them be any easier than relating to an individual?

I'm enjoying this discussion but should we start another thread?

------------------
Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.

[This message has been edited by jh (edited September 21, 1999).]
 

All you have to do is stop arguing at cross-purposes! Don't get bogged down in semantics. For a start, Sol has a point that the Collective might find it hard to interact with individuals. But I don't think that's why they created the speakers, be they Locutus or the Queen(s). The creation of a speaker in that context might imply compromise, and the Borg have no intention of compromising.

The Borg believe they are right. And nothing is going to persuade them otherwise. one might even say that the whole question of whether they are right or not is, to them, irrelevant. Locutus was a tool to persuade humanity that assimilation was inevitable and unavoidable. That's all. If humanity chose to ignore this message, then the iron claw inside the velvet glove would come into play. Likewise the Queen's duties as a speaker.

The ultimate question becomes: is the Queen an individual? The answer's no. However, she seemed to have far more of the Collective invested in her. Remember, that's what I started this thread to talk about: what IS the collective when it's quite demonstrably not a group mind comprising all the individuals that have been assimilated by it? The drones in "Unity" lost the main connection to the Collective and reasserted their individuality as a result. No Queen there, obviously. The mini-Collective in ST:FC had assimilated Cardassians, Klingons and Bolians and humans - yet had a Queen to keep them in line.

So the Queen isn't THE Collective, although to the unit itself it might seem like that. The overall Collective doesn't usually put much of itself into the individual drone apart from controlling it; but it does put more of itself into the Queen.

------------------
"The next time the workplace seems especially hectic, remind yourself it could be worse: you could have two-dozen sharp-toothed creatures chewing on your nipples." - James Lileks

 

It almost sounds as if she 'founded' the Borg.

------------------
A-"Dippidy Doo." Q-"What forms on your dippity early in the morning?"--Johnny Carson

Now, you might say it might not occur to the Borg to lie. They might not consider it necessary - after all, what can anyone do with such information against the all-powerful Borg?

But consider: "I am the Collective." Considering that they're shut off from the true Colleective and without her it's just a bunch of miffed ex-drones, then technically she's telling the truth. "I bring order from chaos" - maybe not a Borg Mission Statement, but really describing her function within the Collective. Without the existence of centralised, higher processing units such as Queens, once again the Collective is reduced to a bunch of fractious drones just as in "Unity." There was chaos on that planet, I'm sure you'll agree.

The best lies are always those which contain a significant amount of the truth. While Picard and Data were free and had a chance of resistance, she wasn't going to give them anything that might help them; but once Data had apparently given in, it never once occurred to her he might not be genuine 0 after all, resistance IS futile. . .

------------------
"The next time the workplace seems especially hectic, remind yourself it could be worse: you could have two-dozen sharp-toothed creatures chewing on your nipples." - James Lileks

 

"Without the existence of centralised, higher processing units such as Queens, once again the Collective is reduced to a bunch of fractious drones just as in "Unity." There was chaos on that planet, I'm sure you'll agree."

It's not the that the queen is a centralised higher processer, it's just that she maintains the connection to the Collective. It's the loss of the connection that resutls in the regaining of individuality because the flow of information is no longer two way. It begins and ends with the individual. You said as much yourself two posts up.

What is the Collective if not just a group mind? I don't think we can answer that using anything that points to a particular part of the collective and I think the basic language that people use when talking about the queen does that inherently. Basically I think we're trying to figure out the Collective by looking at the queen instead of trying to figure out the queen by looking at the Collective.

Look at it this way. If you take the idea of Collective consciousness just as it is, you then think of practically how it would work if it were truly collective and not some Soviet style collective. Meaning, don't go into it with the idea that there have to be centralized parts or some sort of Polit Bureau (in a brain-functioning kind of way). You say that the collective is not a group mind made up of the individuals, and I agree with that. But why then would use that basic format when trying to figure out the collective? By pointing to the queen or centralizing her role or any role of the pieces of the collective you're basically saying that something has to exist to bring the individual minds of each drone into line with the collective. But then you're right back to the group mind which you don't want. Instead start with the idea of a mass consciousness where each drone, instead of being a mind, is just a thought, or a nerve cell. Sure a more complicated nerve cell than our own, but performing the same basic functions. Receive, react. That's it. That way the queen is just a router, without any more cognisant functions outside of the ordinary drone (which is what everyone else seems to be saying, that she has all the same functions and then some, including more awareness. Only they want to say that that doesn't make her more individualized or more centralized, something that strikes me as a contradiction) just different ones.

When the Queen says "I am the Collective" she's not making any special statement about her role, in my mind, she's only using language to emphasize each piece of the Collective is a piece of the totality. In a strange way it's the same as the Nike commercial "I am Tiger Woods". It's an identification with the larger picture or a message of belonging rather than a statement about function or role.

I just think that if you can't give the queen functions above that of the ordinary drone without taking some away from her, too. Giving her drone abilities plus 'blank' means you are making her somehow 'more' something. I don't like the 'more' part. It makes the Collective less even and more like the Polit Bureau.

------------------
Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
 

But more damningly, you missed the point that got me started on all this in the first place: The Borg are NOT a collection of minds. That would imply that it is a sum of the parts, and there are going to be a hell of a lot of parts that aren't happy at being mere parts. How many Borg were there on the Enterprise? How many of those do you think were ex-Starfleet? Most. There's no way that this mini-collective wouldn't come to be dominated by them! And what happened in "Unity?" Given the chance, the drones chose to be individuals again. Never mind that they then decided to re-establish a partial collective to enable them to function better together. . .

------------------
"The next time the workplace seems especially hectic, remind yourself it could be worse: you could have two-dozen sharp-toothed creatures chewing on your nipples." - James Lileks

 

Observation: People assimilated on the Enterprise E became standard Borg drones.

If the Collective is ruled by the will of those assimilated, the Borg onboard the Enterprise would have been made up of a majority of Starfleet officers. This, however, did not occur. Instead, the Borg aboard the Enterprise acted as all Borg do, even though they only had access to a collective made up of the drones aboard the ship.

Conclusion: While all the knowledge of an assimilated person is incorporated into the Collective, the "will" of the person is not. Hence, the Collective exists as an entity seperate from the minds of the assimilated.

In other words, the Borg Collective is an intelligence that coopts the minds of those who it assimilates.

Now, how does that relate to the "queen"? It suggests that the Collective stored certain important files in her to be used when cutoff from the rest of the Collective. Is she special? Only in a situation where there is no contact with the rest of the Borg. Zap a "queen" sitting on Planet 3832/X83129? Nothing happens. She wasn't doing anything that can't be done in a different matter. Zap a "queen" who's with some Borg in, say, 8472's space, and the drones connected to her die.

In fact, now that I think about it, that makes a lot of sense. Seven WAS a "queen"! Think about it...the plan was for her to take Voyager into fluidic space and use that weapon against 8472, yes? Well, that would set up conditions identical to First Contact. A small group of Borg in a situation where they were cut off from the rest of the Collective. (Of course, there's a nagging voice at the back of my head suggesting that she might have been in contact with the rest of the the Borg even while in fluidic space, which would negate this. Anyone?)

------------------
"And much of Madness, and more of Sin, and Horror the soul of the plot."
--
The Conqueror Worm, by Edgar Allan Poe
 

If the Borg are truely decentralized, how do you explain the Unicomplex seen in Dark Horizon? It seemed to be a central reference point (spacial grid 1, unimatrix 1, etc.).

The big question seems to be "Who's mind is it?" We've established that it can't be a general consensus among drones. Is it possible that there is a general consensus among the queens, and that that forms the hive mind? That is assuming, of course, that the queens are truely individual, and not just specialized drones. Let's say that each queen's domain is a subjunction, and that each subjucntion is divided into grids of a certain number of drones each. The collection of the queens would be called the unimatrix, or rather unimatrix 01, as the Borg would never just call something "the" whatever. Thus, if you're a "temporary adjunct to unimatrix 01", you're queen for a day, or something like that. So in the case that the queen dies, and that a signal from another nearby queen can't keep the collective together, or at least designate a temporary adjunct, the collective falls apart. Keep in mind that there would have to be millions of queens.

Quick recap: the queens are the true collective, and each queen has absolute control of the drones in her (his?) subjunction, but the collective controls the queens. If the collective is not available for some reason, be it temporal displacement or a dampening field, the queen has complete control of the drones in the area. If the queen fails, and nothing is available to take her place, the subjunction dies. Any problems with this theory?

On a side note, with this kind of system, the plan that that race (can't remember the name, but I think their designation was species 6339; anyone have a list of the species numbers seen so far?) had to destroy the collective ship by ship, in such a manner that by the time they realized what was happening, it would be too late, would probably work. Destroy the collective queen by queen.

------------------
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
- H. L. Mencken
 

Besides, Seven wasn't a temporary adjunct to unimatrix 01, she was a tertiary adjunct.

Now, back to this "Scorpion" thing. I'm going to have to dig out the tape, assuming I still have it recorded. Depending on the amount of signal degradation, a "queen" might have still been needed.

So, assuming the unimatrices represent some of those command sections that Data spoke of, what would an adjunct be? An aide? Or perhaps...a representative? Maybe even a spokesperson? Perhaps "unimatrix adjunct" is Borg jargon for queen. Personally, I'm starting to like this solution. It gives us a proper, if unwieldy, name for the "queen". It also explains away some of Seven's behavior in "Scorpion". Though, as I said, it's been awhile since I've seen the episode. I might be remembering her actions wrong.

------------------
"And much of Madness, and more of Sin, and Horror the soul of the plot."
--
The Conqueror Worm, by Edgar Allan Poe
 

------------------
"The next time the workplace seems especially hectic, remind yourself it could be worse: you could have two-dozen sharp-toothed creatures chewing on your nipples." - James Lileks

 

1)From Sol: "Hence, the Collective exists as an entity seperate from the minds of the assimilated.

In other words, the Borg Collective is an intelligence that coopts the minds of those who it assimilates.

Now, how does that relate to the "queen"? It suggests that the Collective stored certain important files in her to be used when cutoff from the rest of the Collective. Is she special? Only in a situation where there is no contact with the rest of the Borg. Zap a "queen" sitting on Planet 3832/X83129? Nothing happens. She wasn't doing anything that can't be done in a different matter. Zap a "queen" who's with some Borg in, say, 8472's space, and the drones connected to her die.

In fact, now that I think about it, that makes a lot of sense. Seven WAS a "queen"! Think about it...the plan was for her to take Voyager into fluidic space and use that weapon against 8472, yes? Well, that would set up conditions identical to First Contact. A small group of Borg in a situation where they were cut off from the rest of the Collective. (Of course, there's a nagging voice at the back of my head suggesting that she might have been in contact with the rest of the the Borg even while in fluidic space, which would negate this. Anyone?)"

This is exactly the train of thought that I was following, though I was getting there in a roundabout sort of way. The queen is a connection to the rest of the Collective, and is used whenever a new collective is started, when the simple distances demand it, etc. But she is only a connection, a filter. The Borg may store files in her as ROM or something given any of those special situations but in ordinary situations (your planet 3832) there's nothing all that special about her. She just is a juncture for flow of information to and from the Collective. Which brings me to:

2) From The First One: "Whether just a router, a centralised processor (but not THE central processor, I've always tried to draw parallels with the power distribution nodes) or whatever, there is something different about her. You can't just deny that because it goes against everything the Borg are supposed to be about. The fact remains: she's not a drone.
But more damningly, you missed the point that got me started on all this in the first place: The Borg are NOT a collection of minds. That would imply that it is a sum of the parts, and there are going to be a hell of a lot of parts that aren't happy at being mere parts. How many Borg were there on the Enterprise? How many of those do you think were ex-Starfleet? Most. There's no way that this mini-collective wouldn't come to be dominated by them! And what happened in "Unity?" Given the chance, the drones chose to be individuals again. Never mind that they then decided to re-establish a partial collective to enable them to function better together. . ."

I think Sol answered most of this admirably. The Collective is a separate entity above and beyond the minds of those assimilated. The memories, etc, are taken but the will is not. I would never argue that the Collective was just a group mind or some sort of mass democracy where the individual mind-votes were tallied. The drones in Unity were re-asserting their individuality because they were cut off from the collective. The drones in FC died not just because they were cut off but because their queen/connection was destroyed in their presence (my guess, anyway) causing a feedback effect. But my primary purpose in all of these discussions has been to argue for what Sol has just pointed out, and that is the idea of the Collective as an entity beyond just those assimilated. That's the only way it can stay a true Collective, otherwise you run into exactly the sorts of problems you're pointing out, First One. And the problem I have with the CPU analogy is that it leads us exactly where you've stated, even if you have more than one queen and they are not THE central processor, you're inevitably drawn into assuming that there must be some THE central processor somewhere. Then you've built up a hierarchy, and talk about going against what the Collective is supposed to be about! Of course the queen is not an ordinary drone, in the sense that there are more drones than queens, but I think the presence of a queen is pretty ordinary acting as a connection for the flow of information. As to me straying from your original question (though I've tried to come back to it here, and Sol has stated pretty well what I've been talking about) that's why I asked earlier if we should start a new thread.

3) Omega asked about the Unimatrix. My personal guess, though I don't think we've got enough to go on for sure, is that Unimatrix is Borg for Queen. Seven, in some episode, says "The Borg do not have family. We have unimatrices." As far as the one complex we saw being called Spacial Grid 1, etc. I would just hazard a guess that that doesn't mean it's the primary Unimatrix, just the first. Perhaps the Borg spot of evolution or something. But in keeping with the Collective idea and staying away from hierarchies the idea that it would be designated chronologically and not in order of importance seems more likely.

"Quick recap: the queens are the true collective, and each queen has absolute control of the drones in her (his?) subjunction, but the collective controls the queens. If the collective is not available for some reason, be it temporal displacement or a dampening field, the queen has complete control of the drones in the area. If the queen fails, and nothing is available to take her place, the subjunction dies. Any problems with this theory?"

Take away the 'queens are the true collective' substitute our ideas about the separate nature of the Collective, remove 'absolute control' and substitute the idea that queens only DIRECT the drones according to the will Collective (or that the Collective directs the drones THROUGH the queen -perhaps a better way of saying it) and I think we've got it (by George!!).

------------------
Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.

[This message has been edited by jh (edited September 22, 1999).]
 

So what IS the Collective that controls all those drones? There are several options:

1. The collective small c) SUBconscious of the parts of the Collective. My "Creatures from the Id." Deep inside all of us want to belong, to just be one of the herd. Maybe the Borg are the ultimate manifestation of this. "Yes!" cried the Jews in The Life Of Brian, "we are all individuals!" - the Brian view!

2. The Collective is just software that exists in the body of the Collective - the Matrix view!

3. The nanoprobes. Something in their programming allows them to convert living tissue to be suitable hosts for them, and to connect to other hosts. Alone or spread thinly, nanoprobes are creatures of instinct, following urges to do the above. But once they reach a certain 'critical mass' true Consciousness results. Interestingly, this could then cast the Queens as symbionts rather than hosts. . . This is the Parasite view! 8)

Any other ideas?

------------------
"The next time the workplace seems especially hectic, remind yourself it could be worse: you could have two-dozen sharp-toothed creatures chewing on your nipples." - James Lileks

 

The Borg are scary in that the members of their "society" are nothing but an X. Everyone that is assimilated becomes one with the mainstream mind and loses all individuality. Each drone uniquely contributes to the mainstream but each drone only thinks with and serves the mainstream aka collective.

Like all other Trek aliens, the Borg represent an aspect of humanity. In this case the Borg represent our fear, yet need, of being swallowed by society.

Is the collective mind perfect? It's scary, but the human race would act like the Borg if we were in a collective like theirs. We would become heartless and arrogant assimilaters.

I hope this has made some sense.

------------------
"Forgive me if I don't share your euphoria!" (Weyoun to Dukat, DS9 'Tears of the Prophets')
Dax's Ships of STAR TREK

[This message has been edited by Dax (edited September 22, 1999).]
 

But I digress. We've put aside the question of the difference between Queens and Drones for now. . .

Personally, I think option 2 is the one I would choose. There's something a bit too cerebral, too allegorical about option 1. Much as I'd like to see the Borg as the Evil Krell. Option 3 is definitely the most interesting one, though. . .

------------------
"The next time the workplace seems especially hectic, remind yourself it could be worse: you could have two-dozen sharp-toothed creatures chewing on your nipples." - James Lileks

 

For me, trying to explain collective consciousness isn't any easier than trying to explain our own. And philosophers have been hung up on that for centuries.

Personally, I think the best way to think of the Collective is as an incomplete omniscience. Of course that's a bit of a contradiction but I don't mean it literally. It must be akin to omniscience though because the Collective would embrace everything and anything within it's physical purvue (and beyond, counting the memories, emotions, and knowledge of those assimilated). Imagine the mind of Q and how vast it must be. The Collective, obviously isn't as powerful as that but the Collective consciousness must be closer to that than to our own. Don't you think? Or is that more along the lines of "What's it like to be a Collective consciousness?" Of course then you have the ultimate question (which is I think very important to the Borg and one reason I favor this view of Collective consciousness): Q is omniscient but can retain the perspective of the individual, whereas the Borg have sacrificed that perspective. Is their quest (for Locutus, Data, Seven in Dark Frontier) to bridge the gap between them and humanity essentially an attempt to get closer to the real feeling of true omniscience? To have the knowledge and perspective of the Collective AND be able to revert to an individual perspective, a la Q, at the same time? Seems interesting.

PS: And I think Seven's being assimilated as a child may have indeed made her more suitable for the role of a queen. Wasn't there actually something said in Dark Frontier along the lines that she was essentially destined or being groomed for just that before she was separated? Didn't the queen in that episode say that she was 'special' even before her separation?
------------------
Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.

Addendum: By the way, what's the record for the longest thread?

[This message has been edited by jh (edited September 22, 1999).]
 

As for the Borg, the collective consiousness has to be a collection of a lot of little somethings. The question is what it's a collection of. The theories so far are: the queen's consious minds, the nanoprobes themselves, our subconsiousnes, or copies of sentient software stored here and there (in the queens?) that communicate with each other, coming to a general concensus, and controling the drones by transmiting orders to the nanoprobes through the queens.

I personally like the last one. It seems to explain everything we've seen, while retaining the spirit of the Borg. It reminds me of the Joan and Voltaire sims in the Second Foundation trilogy. They made numerous copies of themselves and diseminated themselves throughout the galaxy, so they couldn't possibly be destroyed completely.

Tertiary adjunct. Right. I knew that.

OK, so if she was a tertiary (as opposed to secondary or primary) adjunct, might that imply that she was some sort of low-level queen, different from the other queens we've seen?

------------------
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
- H. L. Mencken
 

------------------
Frank's Home Page
"Yes, I routinely run any car with Canadian plates off the road. It makes it easier to yank them out, blind them, and put them to work in my underground salt mine." - Simon Sizer
 

Anyway, I've had a thought that's somewhat related to all this. There are a few good things about being assimilated. Namely immortality, of a sort. Seven hinted on this in one episode. The Collective contains every thought you ever had. Every hope and dream and fear. Long after your physical body dies, those thoughts still exist in the Borg. You still exist in the Borg. Forever.

Were I to ever write a script for Voyager, the idea of a species that worships the Borg seems pretty interesting.

------------------
"And much of Madness, and more of Sin, and Horror the soul of the plot."
--
The Conqueror Worm, by Edgar Allan Poe
 

You're right in that it could be a combination of the options: after all, the Collective could be software, and it could be concentrated in the nanoprobes. If any of you have read SF novels concerning the evolution of AI (Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress; Greg Bear's Queen of Angels) you'll see that one likely cause of such evolution is a perfectly normal system mimicking AI then becoming so complex through the number of connections it has, that it becomes self-aware.

------------------
"The next time the workplace seems especially hectic, remind yourself it could be worse: you could have two-dozen sharp-toothed creatures chewing on your nipples." - James Lileks

 

Interrogation of Charles Capps? I'd ask, but judging by your reaction, I'd probably be smited.

Personally, I'd consider immortality in the Borg to be a curse. I'd rather be dead than be used against my friends, but even if you die, it doesn't make any difference. The Borg still have you.

------------------
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
- H. L. Mencken
 

The interrogation of charles lasted through three ubb's and hundreds of posts. As I understand it, the subject is now banned.

------------------
Outside of a dog, a book is a mans best friend. Inside of a dog, it's to dark to read. Groucho Marx

I figure the highest ceremony they have is to take a trip to a Borg ship or installation. The person being tested walks in, says a few prayers, switches on the magic amulet (In reality, salvaged bits of more advanced technology.), and waits. The ultimate goal is to be assimilated, of course.

------------------
"And much of Madness, and more of Sin, and Horror the soul of the plot."
--
The Conqueror Worm, by Edgar Allan Poe
 

------------------
Outside of a dog, a book is a mans best friend. Inside of a dog, it's to dark to read. Groucho Marx