Martha mused about whether or not "evolving" into a hive-like society such
as the Borg is good or bad or even possible.
I have always been impressed with the creative minds behind the Trek
series. Their conception of the Borg creates a fascinating juxtaposition
to the "collective" intelligence of the crew of the Enterprise, based as
it is on respect for each individual and their creative contribution. ("I
was just thinking...Maybe if we just transposed the Ionometric
Photonomagrameter with the Interpolararitized
Trajectoreplicatoscophonitor, we might just get that 8% power boost we
need to...")
By the by, phylogenetically, what would the impact be if what gets passed
from generation to generation (which, in the Borg, seems to be dependent
on assimilating new members) was consciously culled from the individual
ontogenies that have been stripped from each new member of the hive, and
defined by some "divine" consciousness (such as the hive's queen or some
omniscient corporate board of directors)? One of the glitches of the
analogy seems to me to be that the Borg were able to adapt too quickly to
changes the Enterprise crew made to their phasers. In a hive culture, as
far as I know, all change must happen phylogenetically, from generation to
generation. The queen in an insect society is no more able to change as
far as I know than the workers.
Anyhow, in terms of the Borg's potential for survival, notice that the
final battle in First Contact came down to one human and one android
against the entire hive. And the human/android won. (Of course, this is
Hollywood.)
Live long and prosper!
Marilyn Darling
Signet Consulting Group
mdarling@warren.med.harvard.edu
--mdarling@warren.med.harvard.edu
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>