Borg Collective

The Borg Collective is a group of mentally linked, cybernetically enhanced members of various species. Their primary focus is on assimilating other civilizations - that is, absorbing their technology, and forcing them to become augmented and linked to the Collective themselves.

The origins of the Borg are shrouded in mystery. Their name seems to be a play on 'cyborg,' but this may be coincidence. They have existed for at least several thousand years in their current collective state, and are believed to have originated from a species native to the Delta Quadrant. The assimilated members, or drones, have no real will of their own, but share in the group consciousness of the Collective. A 'Queen' individual, who maintains some amount of individuality, presides over the functioning of the Borg as a whole.

During their early contact with the Federation, the Borg appeared to be advanced technological scavengers, concerned almost exclusively with gaining new and better technlogies; they even appeared to raise their own offspring.

Later incidents, however, revealed a different kind of Borg. They were concerned not only with aborsbing the technological characteristics of other species, but the biological features as well. They appeared to grow and advance only through assimilation. It has also been noted that there may have been a drop in their intelligence as time progressed.

Two main theories have been put forward to explain these differences. One is that a new Queen took over the Collective, and some mental or technical defect caused a change in motive and a drop in intellectual capacity. (Some have suggested that there actually was no Queen originally, and that the takeover by the first Queen caused the changes). The other hypothesis states that, as the Borg grew in size from the assimilation of whole societies, they lost the ability to process all the information being exchanged by their own drones, and suffered from it. However, this would not explain why there was a shift towards assimilating species as well as technology. Finally, it may be that what were initially thought to be Borg children were in fact assimilated infants which had been placed in maturation chambers.

Other explanations for the supposed drop in intelligence include the notion that the Borg were 'farming' species in and around their territory; by threating them with hostile actions occasionally, they would stimulate technological development, especially in the area of military technology. If any promising new technologies were devised, the Borg would 'harvest' them with a major invasion. This hypothesis is contested by many scholars, however.

The Borg seem to have met their end at the hands of a time-traveling version of one Captain Katherine Janeway. A future version of Janeway returned to her own past to assist herself with returning to Earth after a long odyssey. In the process, she released a devastating computer virus which caused the Collective to collapse. The extent of this damage (and whether the Borg can recover from it) is unknown, but it is believed to be permanent.

Record 163 - group - Last update 28 Mar 2007, 23:15:28

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