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?

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

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

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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"

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.

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.

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.

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.