On the Borg

Normally, I have few problems separating fiction from fact, fantasy from reality, and unlike Don Quixote, I can tell the difference between a windmill and a giant. Nevertheless, the first time I met the Borg, a race of half-human, half-machine cybernetic drones, I knew I was watching a cautionary tale about the dangers of digital mechanization, the incorporation of technology into the human body, and the uncontrolled growth of technology industries. The Borg, first seen in Star Trek: Next Generation, are a race of biological robots who are controlled by a single “collective”, which is code for eradicating, once and for all, the individual. The actors wear a series of mechanical appliances which are supposed to enhance their biological processes–better eyes, better ears, better hands, whatever, the mechanical parts are better than the biological equivalents. Of course, by eradicating the individual, the social interaction between the drones is less than zero, having been reduced to the social behavior of a colony of bees. The actors playing the drones all look pretty much alike, and their skin is gray, and their amour is black, further erasing the last vestiges of their humanity. The Borg are a kind of cross between undead zombies and Frankenstein’s monster with no will of their own, no thoughts of their own, not really alive or dead—more like machines that have on/off switches. Certainly, there is no personal initiative or ethical or moral codes controlling their behavior. They follow the orders of the “hive” without questioning anything. They don’t even interact with one another, which means they have no emotions, can show no empathy, can show no mercy. They are ideal killers. They are the ultimate consumers of technology as they assimilate the others’ cultures with which they come in contact. The Borg has only one concern: assimilate as many races as possible, adding the uniqueness and technology of each race to their own advantage in search of some sort of ideal perfection. Every time they assimilate a race, they also eradicate the unique identity of each victim, a sort of ethnic cleansing, as it were, to insure the idea that perfection does not lie with the individual, but only with the fascistic collective. Perfection, then, is about eliminating all that is unique or different and bending all of those cultures to some ultra-creepy ideology that is concerned with the pursuit of perfection. Why should we, as a people, be concerned about the Borg? Beyond the fact that they are creepy and dark villains, they are also a metaphor for our own society of consumers who are ruled by the collective marketing strategies of the technology companies who are dedicated to rolling out more and better technology to capture the consumer dollar. One of the side-effects of this technology race is a total lack of concern of what technology does to the people who use it. Can we actually say that computers, cell phones, tablets, and laptops make our lives that much better? In some ways, they do enhance communication, especially for those people who are on the go and hard to get a hold of. I like to have a phone in the car in case of emergencies, but I worry about the time people invest in social media and what that takes away from their relationships. I worry that the technology crushes individuality and creativity, that smart phones and tablets eliminate real face to face communication, that technology isolates the individual, repressing or eliminating real communication. Is the Borg collective our society turned on its head and taken to its last apocalyptic logical conclusion? The day it is possible to have a smart phone implanted into your head so you don’t have to worry about carrying it around or making sure it’s charged is the day we all need to take a good long look at what we are doing, but then again, by then, it may be too late.

On the Borg

Normally, I have few problems separating fiction from fact, fantasy from reality, and unlike Don Quixote, I can tell the difference between a windmill and a giant. Nevertheless, the first time I met the Borg, a race of half-human, half-machine cybernetic drones, I knew I was watching a cautionary tale about the dangers of digital mechanization, the incorporation of technology into the human body, and the uncontrolled growth of technology industries. The Borg, first seen in Star Trek: Next Generation, are a race of biological robots who are controlled by a single “collective”, which is code for eradicating, once and for all, the individual. The actors wear a series of mechanical appliances which are supposed to enhance their biological processes–better eyes, better ears, better hands, whatever, the mechanical parts are better than the biological equivalents. Of course, by eradicating the individual, the social interaction between the drones is less than zero, having been reduced to the social behavior of a colony of bees. The actors playing the drones all look pretty much alike, and their skin is gray, and their amour is black, further erasing the last vestiges of their humanity. The Borg are a kind of cross between undead zombies and Frankenstein’s monster with no will of their own, no thoughts of their own, not really alive or dead—more like machines that have on/off switches. Certainly, there is no personal initiative or ethical or moral codes controlling their behavior. They follow the orders of the “hive” without questioning anything. They don’t even interact with one another, which means they have no emotions, can show no empathy, can show no mercy. They are ideal killers. They are the ultimate consumers of technology as they assimilate the others’ cultures with which they come in contact. The Borg has only one concern: assimilate as many races as possible, adding the uniqueness and technology of each race to their own advantage in search of some sort of ideal perfection. Every time they assimilate a race, they also eradicate the unique identity of each victim, a sort of ethnic cleansing, as it were, to insure the idea that perfection does not lie with the individual, but only with the fascistic collective. Perfection, then, is about eliminating all that is unique or different and bending all of those cultures to some ultra-creepy ideology that is concerned with the pursuit of perfection. Why should we, as a people, be concerned about the Borg? Beyond the fact that they are creepy and dark villains, they are also a metaphor for our own society of consumers who are ruled by the collective marketing strategies of the technology companies who are dedicated to rolling out more and better technology to capture the consumer dollar. One of the side-effects of this technology race is a total lack of concern of what technology does to the people who use it. Can we actually say that computers, cell phones, tablets, and laptops make our lives that much better? In some ways, they do enhance communication, especially for those people who are on the go and hard to get a hold of. I like to have a phone in the car in case of emergencies, but I worry about the time people invest in social media and what that takes away from their relationships. I worry that the technology crushes individuality and creativity, that smart phones and tablets eliminate real face to face communication, that technology isolates the individual, repressing or eliminating real communication. Is the Borg collective our society turned on its head and taken to its last apocalyptic logical conclusion? The day it is possible to have a smart phone implanted into your head so you don’t have to worry about carrying it around or making sure it’s charged is the day we all need to take a good long look at what we are doing, but then again, by then, it may be too late.

On George Takei

I was only six when I first saw Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu at the controls of the Starship Enterprise. This was the first time when I realized the world was a complicated place made up of many different people all working toward a common goal. Yes, Kirk sat in the captain’s chair, but difference and alterity made no difference in the make-up of the crew: an African communications officer who was also a female, a Russian pilot, a Vulcan science officer, a Scottish engineer. In 1965 this was all you could do on television to promote a world in which color, gender, and age (Chekov, very young, Bones, obviously older) made no difference. The homogenous society of my youth–Waspy en extremus, was not really the way the world was shaped. Lieutenant Sulu, the helmsman of this massive ship, cerebral, confident, self-assured, tough, but he was obviously Oriental and not a part of my world. The show demonstrated how important diversity was in the middle of the American civil rights conflagration that was tearing up the country–marches, demonstrations, sit-ins, protests. Even as the show aired, integration was slowly becoming a reality across the entire nation, changing the way we think about everything in our society. Sulu was emblematic of our changing times in which we began to stop judging people by the color of their skin or racial designation. As people we are hard-wired to notice difference, but the superficial differences between peoples are less different than we either know or suspect. The Human Genome project has tracked all humans back to African to about a quarter of million years ago when we all enjoyed a common gene pool and common ancestors. The bridge of the Enterprise is where all of those superficial physical differences stopped being important. Of course, the bridge crew was not perfect–few women in non-traditional roles, Uhura sometimes seemed to be a glorified telephone operator, and the captain’s yeoman, Janice Rand, was rather secretarial, and the head nurse, Chapel, was also a woman, but they were a start. This was, however, 1965, and you can’t change everything at once. In the Next Generation incarnation of show, the bridge crew would be both more diverse and more integrated, a sign that the eighties had already been strongly affected by the show from the sixties. Sulu was about alterity, about difference, about tolerance, about being different but, at the same time, being a part of the whole. American television series of the sixties did not generally have “different” characters. Shows like “Gunsmoke” or “Medical Center” or “My Three Sons” were shows almost exclusively about white males. I remember how surprising it was to see a black doctor on “Emergency”, but that was already in the mid-seventies. Today, George Takei is still about difference, still about alterity, still about being different. How refreshingly wonderful. Let’s all break the mold, throw our expectations to the wind, and start to live life as if being different were no big deal.

On Star Trek (original series)

Some people don’t like Star Trek, but I’m not sure why. A highly literary show, dramatic, melodramatic, and at times highly exaggerated, the show was ground breaking in its scope and creative vision for what an advanced society might look like. Funny how we have incorporated so much of its technology from communicators to tablets in our contemporary society forty years after its debut. Star Trek was a social and political commentary of the United States during the turbulent mid-sixties when the violent anti-war upheavals rocked American society, and flower power was a part of the Age of Aquarius–the moon was in the seventh house. Star Trek raised serious questions about peace and violence, empire and colonialism, race and bigotry, free will and society. Many of the episodes were thinly veiled allegories that commented directly on war, apartheid, violence, exploration, government, race, myth, gender, history, life, ecology. If you watch all of the episodes that list could be much, much longer. Some have criticized the series for promoting American imperialism, reading Star Fleet as a reincarnation of American military policy. Though one cannot completely dismiss such an interpretation, I believe that there are other signifiers within the discourse of the show that reject that reading. For me as a young child watching the show as it was broadcast for the first time, I found its innovative and imaginative array of ideas to be surprising and enchanting. There were no ethical dilemmas or personal conflicts which seemed to be taboo within the bounds of the show. Since they were traveling in space, a long way from Earth, they could deal directly with human problems without being heavy-handed or pedantic. More than one episode ended ambiguously or open to interpretation. The hero, Kirk, is a genuine man of action, perhaps a bit of throwback, who was played with great panache by William Shatner, who made Kirk a larger-than-life Star Fleet captain of the Enterprise. In its pre-Star Wars era, the special effects were a bit simple, but they were believable and refreshing. This was a new kind of television that went way beyond the comedies, westerns, and variety shows that were common on broadcast television of the time. The first inter-racial kiss occurred on Star Trek, for example, and the series acknowledged the existence of sex in the lives of the characters in an honest and open way. You weren’t going to see any of that on Gunsmoke or Bonanza. The show was so innovative, in fact, that I think many people just did not know what they were looking at, and they thought the show was silly and frivolous, so it was canceled after three seasons, but not before leaving an indelible mark on the television landscape. The show created a paradigm for innovative television and storytelling that is still viable some forty years later after numerous films and three more television series. Part of the original series success was its terrific ensemble, good writing, imaginative art direction, creative casting, and willingness to surprise. Although some of the shows don’t hold up very well after all these years, many of the shows are still as solid as they were when they filmed in the sixties. “Take her out, Mr., Sulu, warp factor one.”

On Star Trek (original series)

Some people don’t like Star Trek, but I’m not sure why. A highly literary show, dramatic, melodramatic, and at times highly exaggerated, the show was ground breaking in its scope and creative vision for what an advanced society might look like. Funny how we have incorporated so much of its technology from communicators to tablets in our contemporary society forty years after its debut. Star Trek was a social and political commentary of the United States during the turbulent mid-sixties when the violent anti-war upheavals rocked American society, and flower power was a part of the Age of Aquarius–the moon was in the seventh house. Star Trek raised serious questions about peace and violence, empire and colonialism, race and bigotry, free will and society. Many of the episodes were thinly veiled allegories that commented directly on war, apartheid, violence, exploration, government, race, myth, gender, history, life, ecology. If you watch all of the episodes that list could be much, much longer. Some have criticized the series for promoting American imperialism, reading Star Fleet as a reincarnation of American military policy. Though one cannot completely dismiss such an interpretation, I believe that there are other signifiers within the discourse of the show that reject that reading. For me as a young child watching the show as it was broadcast for the first time, I found its innovative and imaginative array of ideas to be surprising and enchanting. There were no ethical dilemmas or personal conflicts which seemed to be taboo within the bounds of the show. Since they were traveling in space, a long way from Earth, they could deal directly with human problems without being heavy-handed or pedantic. More than one episode ended ambiguously or open to interpretation. The hero, Kirk, is a genuine man of action, perhaps a bit of throwback, who was played with great panache by William Shatner, who made Kirk a larger-than-life Star Fleet captain of the Enterprise. In its pre-Star Wars era, the special effects were a bit simple, but they were believable and refreshing. This was a new kind of television that went way beyond the comedies, westerns, and variety shows that were common on broadcast television of the time. The first inter-racial kiss occurred on Star Trek, for example, and the series acknowledged the existence of sex in the lives of the characters in an honest and open way. You weren’t going to see any of that on Gunsmoke or Bonanza. The show was so innovative, in fact, that I think many people just did not know what they were looking at, and they thought the show was silly and frivolous, so it was canceled after three seasons, but not before leaving an indelible mark on the television landscape. The show created a paradigm for innovative television and storytelling that is still viable some forty years later after numerous films and three more television series. Part of the original series success was its terrific ensemble, good writing, imaginative art direction, creative casting, and willingness to surprise. Although some of the shows don’t hold up very well after all these years, many of the shows are still as solid as they were when they filmed in the sixties. “Take her out, Mr., Sulu, warp factor one.”

On warp speed

At some point in the future science and technology will reach a point where we figure out how to go faster than the speed of light. I know this seems impossible at this point because mass increases to infinity at the horizon of the speed of light, but just because the problem seems impossible almost guarantees that someone will find a solution. We will laugh at our own simplicity, our primitive nature of sticking to our old scientific paradigms even in the face of real proof that upholds a hypothesis and turns it into a theory. I suppose our tendency to stick to an established paradigm is only too human. We want to explain our world, so we deem that which we don’t fully understand as impossible. Traveling faster than the speed of light will probably have something to with creating energy fields which move mass outside the boundaries of standard time and space, whatever that might mean. I don’t believe we really understand three-dimensional space or this thing that we call “time.” We move through space and time in what we perceive to be a lineal fashion, but these are only our primitive and conventional manner of describing a complex and chaotic process which we simplify so we don’t go mad. To imagine that all times and all spaces exist all in the same moment and space doesn’t make sense to our little brains. We fall victim to our own egos and hubris by imagining that we understand “reality” just because we live inside of it. For century we could not get past a geocentric universe even in the face of the truth because not being the center of the universe is more frightening than changing the paradigm. Warp speed won’t be discovered tomorrow, or the next day, or even next year, but we did land a two thousand pound rover on Mars last week, and that seemed impossible not too long ago. The fact that we can imagine warp speed means that sooner or later an engineer and a physicist will figure it out. When that happens, we will move out toward the planets and eventually the stars. When that happens, we will marvel at our simplicity. And the answer will have nothing to do with our preconceived ideas of motion, work, speed, mass and velocity. The new paradigm will cast aside ideas of fuel, propulsion, and everything else we know about concerning the speed of things. Change is not the only constant in the universe, but we may have to revise our idea of constant. From our relative perspective, light travels at a specific speed, but what about other perspectives? We didn’t think that communicators were possible, but now we all have them. We also did not think that Ipods or digital music were possible, but now they are commonplace. Warp speed may take a little longer, but the way technology is progressing, I might see it in my lifetime. We will redefine things like time and event horizon, and velocity will mean something else. Understand the implications of warp speed, hardly, but without having the ability to imagine it, we just grow old and boring.

On warp speed

At some point in the future science and technology will reach a point where we figure out how to go faster than the speed of light. I know this seems impossible at this point because mass increases to infinity at the horizon of the speed of light, but just because the problem seems impossible almost guarantees that someone will find a solution. We will laugh at our own simplicity, our primitive nature of sticking to our old scientific paradigms even in the face of real proof that upholds a hypothesis and turns it into a theory. I suppose our tendency to stick to an established paradigm is only too human. We want to explain our world, so we deem that which we don’t fully understand as impossible. Traveling faster than the speed of light will probably have something to with creating energy fields which move mass outside the boundaries of standard time and space, whatever that might mean. I don’t believe we really understand three-dimensional space or this thing that we call “time.” We move through space and time in what we perceive to be a lineal fashion, but these are only our primitive and conventional manner of describing a complex and chaotic process which we simplify so we don’t go mad. To imagine that all times and all spaces exist all in the same moment and space doesn’t make sense to our little brains. We fall victim to our own egos and hubris by imagining that we understand “reality” just because we live inside of it. For century we could not get past a geocentric universe even in the face of the truth because not being the center of the universe is more frightening than changing the paradigm. Warp speed won’t be discovered tomorrow, or the next day, or even next year, but we did land a two thousand pound rover on Mars last week, and that seemed impossible not too long ago. The fact that we can imagine warp speed means that sooner or later an engineer and a physicist will figure it out. When that happens, we will move out toward the planets and eventually the stars. When that happens, we will marvel at our simplicity. And the answer will have nothing to do with our preconceived ideas of motion, work, speed, mass and velocity. The new paradigm will cast aside ideas of fuel, propulsion, and everything else we know about concerning the speed of things. Change is not the only constant in the universe, but we may have to revise our idea of constant. From our relative perspective, light travels at a specific speed, but what about other perspectives? We didn’t think that communicators were possible, but now we all have them. We also did not think that Ipods or digital music were possible, but now they are commonplace. Warp speed may take a little longer, but the way technology is progressing, I might see it in my lifetime. We will redefine things like time and event horizon, and velocity will mean something else. Understand the implications of warp speed, hardly, but without having the ability to imagine it, we just grow old and boring.