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According to the official Star Trek line, the Borg are “a massive organization of cybernetic organisms assimilated from other species,” and they go about the galaxy seeking to assimilate
other cultures into their great collective. A kind of hive mind, the “collective” is a term describing the fact that every individual of the Borg is permanently linked to all the others in a vast network. They think
as one, and act as one, tooling about in vast cube shaped ships that look like a compressed pile of industrial junk. In the collective, individuality is surrendered to the greater good of the whole, and the standard line to any
who oppose assimilation into this juggernaut society is that “resistance is futile.”
Indeed, in a recent statement published in Time Magazine, a senior US official demonstrated just how testy the collective can be about “resistance.” QUOTE: “A senior U.S.
military official in Iraq insists there is no resistance, as such. "Stop right there," he said when he heard the word. "Resistance is way too strong. Look around. We're not facing some kind of organized
guerrilla force. What's happening is that peace and stability are taking hold, and the more they do, noncompliant forces are becoming more desperate and radicalized."
Noncompliant forces...The Borg could not have said it better!
In many ways the Borg are a fitting metaphor of our own society, arising from our own entertainment segment to mirror some of the sweeping changes that new computer technologies have initiated.
Indeed, we are a kind of collective in this society, wired together by telephones, television, radio, computer networks and the “World Wide Web.” The first appearance of these connections were the ugly strands of
wire hoisted up on telephone poles that bloomed and dangled over the landscape of every American city. Electric power, telephone lines and cable quickly linked each household in America and set them glowing in the dark as the
collective took root. Take a brief look at the image below (Click to enlarge) and you will see the vast difference between developed and undeveloped nations—between those
firmly wired into the collective and those left on the outside.
Increasingly, the connections that bind us in the collective are becoming wireless and portable. Now it is not merely our household
that is connected, it is our person. Laptop computers and cellular phones linked to GPS satellites are a perfect initial example. Now we can stay connected anywhere we go, and always know exactly
where we are. But the inverse is also true: that the collective as a whole can hear you whenever you talk, and know exactly where you are. It’s an obvious statement, but a chilling one. Soon advances in
computers will see wafer thin micro-chips woven into our clothing. (The chips are already in our cars), so we will always have the internet, mp3 music, and the latest news at hand. People read books on little palm pilots; they
“instant message” each other with little LED screen devices, they yammer and chat on the cell phones while standing on street corners and browsing in supermarkets, like madmen speaking to
unseen ethereal entities. Even the old print media may soon give way to those nifty plastic newspapers featured in Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report”—flexible LED technology that is
permanently wired to some distant host news server, constantly updating and changing the headlines to display the latest “news.”
The chips in our clothing may offer us a new convenience soon: we just use a tiny USB plug near
the zipper or behind a button and connect the jacket to our computer where we can “register” it with the manufacturer and gain access to a wealth of extra features. The registration will be data
based, of course, and soon we will get another of Spielberg’s cute premonitions: you will walk into a department store and the wide screen display that has replaced the friendly old Wal-Mart
greeter will know exactly who we are, by name, what we’ve bought and what we might be interested to learn about today’s specials. “Hello Mr. So and So, welcome to Wal-Mart and don’t
miss our special on aisle four!” Spielberg’s vision was just an obvious, simple leap ahead, perhaps only a few year’s distant.
Even now, however, we are already wired together so tightly that we collectively shudder from the
emotional impact of “breaking news.” The media have been so insistent to be sure we are paying attention that those little scrolling news tickers, once associated with bulletins of extreme
emergency, have now become permanent features on all the main news channels. This has ratcheted up the level of anxiety in the collective considerably, instilling fear and signaling the
general dread from terror in hues of amber, orange and red. Now the news stations are always on the jangled edge of “breaking news,” fraught with tension. The screens whirl and flash. Words like
ALERT are displayed to introduce the most commonplace of news items: like the fate of a Grade-B Hollywood actor as he stands trial, or a run-of-the-mill fire. We are not being given information
any longer, we are being alerted, with ticker tapes and flashing bulletins shepherded by chatty analysts who present three minute stories in a never ending montage. And the result of this wired
anxiety is that people are getting edgy, fearful, and their apprehension has increased dramatically. More Americans than ever are going through life popping pills to maintain an even keel, and
pharmacists report sales of sedatives, anti-depressants and other similar drugs are skyrocketing. Because we are so wired in, so connected to the collective, the pulse of anxiety spreads rapidly,
like an over sensitized nervous system reacting to each new jitter and jog of world events.
Do I exaggerate? Try to go through one normal day unplugged: no television, radio, phone calls, e-mail, VCR, DVD, CD-ROM or net browsing of any type. In short, no media input, and no use of
any media to contact anyone else in the collective. You will find the experience very odd. Perhaps, at first, you may feel strangely alone, isolated, cut off. It will seem a minor
inconvenience, then a rising discomfort. As time passes you will grapple with boredom—my God how will you fill up the hours? If you are an avid reader you may find some solace, but no fair
reading any newspaper or media magazine. Soon you will find that you can eat, sleep, play a musical instrument, or do a craft project to fill up the time. You might try conversation and,
lacking any intelligent companionship, you may even resort to art—some creative act. But that’s YOU, a reasonably intelligent, educated person if you have invested the time to read this far.
What about the countless thousands who haven’t read a novel in years and have no creative impulses? What do they do? Go shopping?
Take this experiment one step further and turn off the electricity that fuels all our collective technology. Californians experienced that unprecedented event just a year ago as rolling brown
-outs became Con-Edison’s desperate cry for help. The unthinkable actually happened—they turned off the power! There’s no better way to get someone’s attention and persuade them that
they will have to pony up a lot more cash if they want to stay hot-wired to the collective. And it worked. Turn off the power for a day here and there and you get rate hikes. Turn it off for a week
and you get riots. The vast majority of people addicted to the constant stream of media and technology will not sit quietly by the fireside and read books if the power should ever go off. They
would soon take to the streets, and civil unrest would become a grim reality. Crime would soar, and our civilized, wired neighborhoods would soon become Burroughs of gang-infested combat.
Do I exaggerate? Consider the week-long riots in LA, where people were taking advantage of the slip in civil control to conduct wholesale looting, carting off TVs, VCRs, and even entire sofas
roped on to the rooftops of their cars. I remember quite clearly as Hal Fishman remarked during the coverage of a burning building that: (And I paraphrase) ‘On any given night this story alone
would get top billing in the news, but tonight we have thirty-two separate buildings on fire and wholesale looting throughout large segments of the city.’ There were rumblings in the collective, to be sure.
 Yes,
we are the Borg, a collective society that feeds on media input and is addicted to the technology that drives us forward. Our government is busy projecting power into all
the crucial geographic regions that supply us our oil to insure the collective stays fueled. Culturally, we are busy extending our networks, our pop media, our consumer based values into every wired corner of the globe,
assimilating other nations and cultures in the process—and resistance is futile. Our invincible military will intervene on our behalf wherever, and whenever the collective is threatened. (Cube artwork above by Robert Baillet - and as
Thomas Dolby once said: “May the Cube be with you!”)
But what of that vast class of people as yet unwired? In Bangladesh, a small nation with a population about half the size of the US, there is only one automobile for every thousand people,
and one computer for every ten-thousand. They are clearly outside the collective there! The average American home will have two or three cars parked in front of it, and an equal number of
televisions and computers inside. The disparity between the ‘haves’ inside the collective and the
‘have-nots’ outside is as glaring as night and day. Is it any wonder that the ‘have-nots’ view our intrusion into their homelands with suspicion, resentment and a growing frustration that is
building to hatred? Are we coming to their homeland to wire them up and deliver computers, cell phones and DVDs? I think not. We are coming to assimilate their resources.
Imagine, for a moment, how you would feel if China was the dominant power on earth, culturally, economically and militarily. Now imagine what Americans would think if China had sent half a
million men under arms into Central America ten years ago to suppress “emerging democratic governments and other terrorist institutions” there; if the Chinese had a flotilla of naval ships
permanently stationed in the Gulf Of Mexico; if they began to build vast command and control centers on the island of Cuba, if they were making bellicose statements about the “oppressive
democratic regimes” in the region and were building up military power at bases all around the frontiers of the United States. Suppose the Chinese insisted that we see the light and join all the
other communist nations of the world. Suppose they insisted we stop consuming so much oil, and provide for the common good along a Skinnerian model of “from each according to his
abilities; too each according to his needs.” Now suppose there was nothing whatsoever the US could do about it. China was invincible, and communism was the manifest destiny of the world.
Get the point? What if some of the other cultures of the world don’t want our Borg-like dream of connected consumerism? Should we force them to see the light? Should we make sure they sell
us their oil whether they assimilate or not? The US drinks down one quarter of the world’s daily production of oil. Bangladesh? Who cares?
There was a chilling line in the movie “Full Metal Jacket,” that has application here. While this
was a film made to point out the foibles of a previous generation’s war, it carried the seed of an attitude that prevails today. A general was dressing down the film’s wayward GI hero, exhorting
him to get with the program. “Don’t you realize,” he said, “that inside every Gook is an American struggling to get out?” When will we be satisfied, when the sun never sets on Wal-Mart,
McDonalds and Pepsi? Must every society and people on the earth adopt our values, our pop culture, our economic model and system of government? How many more times will we deploy
our military to assure we get our 25% cut of the world’s resources? (Our own oil would run out in three or four years if we did not have continual imports.) Will we only be satisfied when everyone
else is assimilated into our collective? But consider, for a moment, that if we are going to war for control of resources now, how can the rest of the world ever share in a standard of living equal to our own?
The sad truth is that they cannot. The world cannot sustain a level of development equal to that in the US on every shore. The 133 million people in Bangladesh cannot all have two cars, three TVs
, two computers, a VCR, DVD and a great stereo system. There are billion odd people in India that can’t have them either, and another billion in China that can’t have them. There are hundreds
and hundreds of millions in Africa that can’t have them. The world cannot produce all these goods! The oil that drives our society is starting to run dry already. Production is down, and discoveries
are not keeping pace with consumption. Things are going to change, and change drastically before the six and seventh graders of today grow into their thirties and forties. I shudder to think
what the world will be like in thirty years, with yet another billion people on the planet to keep fed, fueled and entertained. There are too many of us on the globe already. What will happen when
all those black regions of Africa in the image above want to glow? What will happen when they want the things the typical American takes for granted today? The truth is, we have no intention
of assimilating everyone—just the populations occupying regions where we need vital resources to keep our own collective running. How long can we sustain it, and at what cost in war, human
suffering, and injustice to others? How long can we continue in this connected Borg-like society, and yet retain any semblance of conscience? These disturbing questions and moral dilemmas
are ours today, but for our children they may become a bitter reality. They may become tomorrow’s war, not only abroad as we project power into resource-rich frontiers, but here in our own neighborhoods and streets.
Somewhere, in the not to distant future, the power will go off. It will have to go off, because there are too many of us to keep everything running. (At current rates of consumption the world, using
28 billion barrels per year, will use up all the oil reserves in the top 10 producing countries in just 31 years.) In that brief time the darkness will again reclaim the night—the soft glow of the Borg
will begin to wink out. Unless, and this is a big challenge, we begin to develop some other means of producing energy that does not also end up producing nuclear bombs. Suppose China had a
living standard equal to our own, and consumed resources as we do. They would drink down over 25 billion barrels of oil per year, almost as much as the whole world uses in a year today. What
about India? Suppose they start consuming like the US and drink another 15 to 20 billion barrels per year? If this happened the world’s annual consumption could soar to nearly a hundred billion
barrels...And it would all run out in 8 or 9 years, if it could even be produced with today’s infrastructure. This is why, for so many countries in the undeveloped regions of the world, there is so little hope.
 Here’s another of those satellite photos showing Korea. (Click to Enlarge) Look at the stark difference between the north and south! The great collective hive of Japan is clearly visible, and on the
Korean peninsula Seoul glows brightly. But North Korea is so black that the south appears to be an island, detached from the rest of the Asian coastline that is also clearly visible. Yes, North Korea is one
of those oppressive little regimes that won’t get with the program—won’t let the American inside every Korean out like they do in the South. They won’t
get with the program, and they are starving to death in the cold winter, and making nuclear bombs because they are frightened of an attack by the Borg. They are increasingly desperate
and, guess what—desperate people do desperate things. They may decide that we are deliberately keeping them from their fair share of oil, television sets, cars, DVDs, and cell phones
, not to mention food. (Would we do a thing like that?) They may indeed do something desperate, and if they do we will shake our heads with disgust and send our military over to deal with the
matter. After all, they can’t push us around, can they? We are the Borg!
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