Escaped gaming meme: Borg Makeover

[mithriltabby]

Having discovered A Miracle of Science and played Deus Ex: Invisible War recently, another science fictional hive mind comes up: the Borg, introduced in Star Trek: the Next Generation as über-bad-guys.

The Borg— as well as the Replicators of Stargate SG-1— seem to be lacking a basic bit of sense: at some point, your survival is sufficiently assured that you no longer need to aggressively seize resources, and can start acquiring them in more subtle ways that work well with long-term survival. Ways that can cause other intelligent beings to not attack you because they have ethical considerations.

Despite their amazing amount of technical intelligence, they never seem to assimilate people from the public relations or marketing departments. If I were on a planet doomed to assimilation by the Borg, I’d go out in a shuttlecraft and suggest an alternate strategy (on the “go ahead and assimilate me, but if you really want a long-term winning strategy, let me run this as an experimental project” principle):

First, relax the hive mind constraints a bit, enough to give each member of the collective their own individuality while still contributing their abilities to the overall group.

Second, get a makeover. Redesign the big, ugly cubes to smooth, sleek creations like Moya in Farscape, and give them nicer interior spaces. Redesign the clunky implants to something a little more aesthetically pleasing. Keep all the fancy nanotech, but acknolwedge that when you’ve got that much power, you can afford to spend a little on things like growing hair and clothing that isn’t black. Let your personnel choose their own appearance, which can put all that recovering individuality to good use.

Third, go out and announce that there’s been a revolution among the Borg. (Implants under the thumbnail allowing everyone to raise a thumbs-up sign with a lighter flame on top while shouting “FREEBORG!” are optional. But even a wretched pun would make people notice the contrast with the humorless Borg.) Show up in star systems and give members shore leave to visit relatives (assuming they have any that haven’t been assimilated) and let them talk about how nice it is to be in a collective where everyone’s looking out for you.

Fourth, announce that you’ll be using the power of the Borg, now freed from tyranny, on humanitarian projects; build up cred with groups like the Federation. Clean up messes created by old-regime Borg policies, help out with ecological disasters, that sort of thing. Allow people with smaller warp ships to hitch high-speed transwarp rides in your gigantic ships in exchange for the latest information from their civilization. Get a reputation for being nice guys.

Fifth, establish recruitment offices on major planets. You don’t need to forcibly assimilate people if you can get volunteers, and you don’t need to assimilate entire civilizations in order to gain all the distinctiveness you want. And with a reputation for being peaceful, friendly interstellar travellers, you’ll get fewer armadas gunning for you.

This doesn’t necessarily make for a good story, as something as powerful as the Borg being a good guy would be rather upsetting to the amount of conflict in the galaxy, and you’d need to worry about stories with the Organians or the Q having to decide whether these people are going be benevolent by the time they upgrade to energy beings or what have you.

Comments

[baronlaw.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm good thinking

*begin transmission*

FREEBORG!

[deirdremoon.livejournal.com]

Ai-ya, I hurt all over... And why do I get the feeling they'd be able to smile, boogy, and blend about as convincingly as the cephalopods from "Galaxy Quest"...

Re: FREEBORG!

[mithriltabby]

Depends on how well they loosen up and give their members individuality. Would you be tempted to join a collective intelligence if it meant you could download top-notch dancing skills on demand and have a thousand acerbic wits available to help you pick eloquent responses to the people that deserve a good put-down?

Re: FREEBORG!

[cmccurry.livejournal.com]

I just have this image of "Queer Eye for the Borg Guy" going through my head right now.

[racerxmachina.livejournal.com]

First, relax the hive mind constraints a bit, enough to give each member of the collective their own individuality while still contributing their abilities to the overall group.

Isn't that kind of how the "hive mind" actually works in nature? The bee makes an individual choice on where to scout, it doesn't get some big psionic "FLOWERS THERE" thought-blast from the hive as a whole.

And oh, yeah, Miracle of Science should be read by everyone with eyes and a working command of English. The idea of mad science as a memetic mental illness is begging for gameplay.

[mithriltabby]

Though among hive insects, anything that isn’t breeding can be treated as an expendable resource, and being seen to throw away your citizens is bad press for a collective intelligence trying to recruit individuals.

Re: FREEBORG!

[mithriltabby]

“So what do you for the collective? You appear to be on permanent vacation!”
“The collective finds it most efficient for me to be well-rested, with my wit readily available for anyone who needs to deliver cutting remarks. Statistical analysis shows a correlation with general happiness of the members. And for me, it’s like being on vacation with the added fun of snarky remarks floating through my mind every so often.”
“That would explain why you chuckle so much.”

[racerxmachina.livejournal.com]

Though the model in MoS on Mars is less like a group of expendable insects... it might be a bad analogy, but I think of Mars like a Beowulf cluster. All those individual thought processes hooked up together. No computer in that network is any more or less vital than the other. (I was quite tickled to see how they "elected" a president.)

"Brazil thinks you're cute."

[mithriltabby]

Yes; that, in my opinion, is the right way to network people together. The Borg are more of the classic hive mind, with people being an expendable resource.

[mithriltabby]

Thinking about job satisfaction this morning, I was reminded of a discussion on Age of Embodiment, and considered a potential posthuman attitude: why should I let have anyone else have all the fun of solving my problems? Right now, it’s impractical to be an expert in everything in your daily life, but that might not be so difficult with an expanded ability to learn and process. Networking the minds of such a group of posthumans would wind up with the traffic being used for discussion, consensus-building, and mentoring. (Imagine being able to query people with great experience: “is this the optimal course of action?” “did I get that right?” “I’ stuck; can I get a hint?”)