2 The Borg Change Over Time

The Borg have changed significantly over the years. Initially, they were a mysterious group of marauders that snatched entire starship crews or took over planets, and rather crudely and frighteningly assimilated the people by surgically altering them for joining the collective. As time went on however, this was replaced with the more efficient method of injecting nanites into the individuals. The nanites would grow electrical input pathways to facilitate the later insertion of the Borg's notable brain uplink to the collective, holographic eye replacement and forearm control unit.

Borg nanoprobes are injected into the bloodstream by tubules that spring forth from the hand of a Borg drone. The nanoprobes are about the size of a red blood cellRed blood cells are the most common type of blood cell and are the vertebrate body's principal means of delivering oxygen to body tissues via the blood. Red blood cells are also known as erythrocytes from Greek erythros for "red" and kytos for "hollow", n and travel through the victim's bloodstream to various tissues and locations throughout the body. The purpose of the Borg nanoprobes are to prepare the body for assimilation. They do this by attaching to cells and re-writing their DNA to alter the victim's biochemistry as well as form higher structures such as electrical pathways, processing and data storage nodes, and ultimately Borg implants that spring forth from the skin like spiders.

It is probable that the nanoprobes utilize iron from blood cells to replicate and create higher structures. Breaking down red blood cells would cause asphyxia or suffocation in the victim, also aiding in the submission to forces taking the body away for full implantation. This also alters the appearance of veins and capillaries large enough for nanoprobes and creates dark veins that appear to snake across the surface of the skin as the cyber-infection spreads. Based on the size of a single nanoprobe and the volume that could be injected in the short time of a drone attack, it is estimated a single injection carries at least 5 million nanoprobes.

3 Origin of the Borg

It has also been speculated that there could be a connection between the origin of the Borg and V'ger, the vessel encountered in . The two organisms are similar in philosophy:

• The Borg are born as wholly organic beings, and melded with hardware to become part machine. They idolize a totally machine state, which is what allows Lore to conquer them in 'Descent'.
• V'ger is originally a machine, but it wanted to see and touch its creator in order to proceed to the next level of life.

The final form of V'ger is the machine somehow "melted" with the two persons. With reasonable conjecture, the Borg, a cybernetic organism, a mixture between man and the machine, is born.

Following , the "Borg from V'Ger" origin theory has a few obstacles.

1. The Borg attempt to use the Enterprise's deflector dish as a subspace transmitter to contact the Borg existing in their time. Voyagers 3-6 have not been launched as of 2003. Assuming V'Ger (Voyager 6) was launched in 2004, by 2063 a spacecraft traveling at Warp .99 would be no more than a short trip from Earth at maximum warp, hardly a distance which would require a subspace transmitter to contact anybody.
2. V'Ger has not merged with its creator prior to this date, and thus would not yet be part human

However this origin story could be reversed into a "V'Ger from Borg" origin theory- V'Ger could have been aided by Borg. V'Ger mentions in a visual presentation of its origin that it was once a smaller machine, one of NASA's Voyager space probes. It was then rescued and augmented by a race of machines... however the name or nature of this machine planet is never elaborated upon, and could well belong to the Borg.

The obstacle to this "V'Ger from Borg" theory is the apparently great distance between Earth and the space dominated by Borg. Possible rationalizations around this:

1. since the Borg were obviously able to travel back into time in the film, it's conceivable that they travelled back at another point to establish a hive in the 21st Century.
2. V'Ger mentions (again in its visual presentation of its origin) that it passed through a kind of disturbance, possibly a wormhole, on its trip to the machine world.

4 Famous Maxim

The classical Borg hail is as follows:

In the movie , the following hail is heard:

5 All Borg episodes to date

This listing is not counting the "normal" Seven of Nine episodes.

5.1

• The Neutral Zone (no Borg are seen or mentioned, but several destroyed colonies are found which are later identified as the site of Borg attacks)
• Q-Who? (first appearance)
• The Best of Both Worlds
• I, Borg
• Descent

5.2

• Emissary (has flashbacks to the Battle of Wolf 359, from The Best of Both Worlds)

5.3

• Unity
• Scorpion
• Dark Frontier
• Collective
• Unimatrix Zero
• Drone
• Endgame

5.4

• Regeneration

6 A theory on Enterprise Contact

7 The Borg in Computer Games

• Star Trek Starfleet Command 3
• Star Trek Borg Assimilator
• Star Trek Elite Force 1 and 2
• Star Trek Armada (in which USS Premonition from the future tells the Enterprise that the borg plans a new invasion and clone Locutus.)
• Star Trek Armada 2 (in which the borg have set up a transwarp link between the Alpha and Delta quadrants and plan another invasion.)
• Star Trek Away Team (Spoiler Warning: The Warden, an enemy in the game have their origin in manipulated borg nanoprobes.)

8 The Borg as a cultural allusion

The Borg were a concept born out of necessity for Star Trek to feature a new heavy and regular enemy that was lacking during the first season of Next Generation now that the Klingons were friends and the Romulans mostly absent. There is little doubt that the Klingon Empire represented the Soviet Union and the Romulan Empire represented Communist China in the original series and some of the subsequent films. Originally intended as the new enemy for the United Federation of Planets, representing the United States, the Ferengi failed to assert themselves as a convincing threat because of their comical, unintimidating appearance and devotion to capitalist accumulation or "free enterprise." They were subsequently re-assigned to the role of annoying but cute comic relief characters. A new collectivist threat was thus needed to replace the Klingons and Romulans. The Borg, with their frightening appearance, immense power, and most importantly a no-nonsense, totally sinister motive became the signature villains for the Next Generation era of Star Trek. Its strongest definition is most probably the fearful Luddite prophecy.

The Borg are one of the more recognizable and popular Star Trek villains, which has made them icons in American popular culture even outside of Star Trek. Referring to a group of people as "borgs", or "borg" (maintaining the proper plural) means that they are completely given to conformity with one another. A single person who is slavishly conformist can also be called "borg," "a borg," or a "drone." Borg is also occasionally used as a slang verb, meaning to take over or absorb something. Example: "Steve borged my CD collection, making copies of almost every disc I own."

9 Hacker jargon

In hacker jargon, to be a user of a Microsoft-based system is to be "assimilated" or "Borged." This is an allusion to Microsoft's wide consumer base. There is a popular picture in circulation through the Internet displaying Bill Gates as a Borg. Postings on the slashdot technology website relating to Microsoft have a graphic of Bill Gates as a Borg.

Microsoft itself is sometimes referred to as "The Borg", reflecting its tendency towards acquiring technology instead of developing it in-house. This started with its purchase of QDOS from the now-defunct Seattle Computer, which Microsoft renamed MS-DOS, its first widely successful product. The list of products based on technology developed by other companies includes Windows Media Player, the ActiMates Barney products, Content Management Server (CMS), originally developed by NCompass Labs, and many others. (It must be noted, however, that this approach is typical to many large companies.)

Microsoft, like the Borg, also has the ability to adapt to and overwhelm its opponents' strategies: initial attacks against it may have some limited success, but once it has adapted and unified its efforts against its foes, the outcome is usually the same.

"Borging" also refers to installing a distributed computing project executable on a business or university computer.

Shortly after the introduction of the Pentium microprocessor, a floating-point arithmetic glitch was found which affected the accuracy of calculations, leading to the popular expression, "I am Pentium of Borg. Accuracy is irrelevant. You will be approximated.", after the well-known Borg expression.

10 Interesting information