The Brain Net

There was an article today about a new artificial hand. This one has sensory feedback directly into the wearer’s nervous system and is controlled by nerve impulses. I get the impression it’s more ‘grafted’ on than ‘strapped’ on.

Sounds like a wonderful advance. Perhaps a little paranoia might creep in as in ‘This is exactly how the Borg got started’ but it’s not, not really. All those Borg enhancements came after they were linked into a hive mind so could not object, and the Borg would drill out a perfectly good eye to install an electronic one, and cut off a perfectly good arm to attach a Swiss Army arm with loads of gadgets.

So no, that artificial hand is not the Borg becoming reality. In fact, a friend who has already lost a finger on each hand to something hereditary known as ‘Viking disease’, and who might lose more, would benefit enormously from a pair of these.

No, to develop the Borg you first have to connect everyone’s brain so thoroughly that independent thought becomes impossible. If you think of something, the entire hive knows it. That will naturally develop into a single mind and individual people will be no more important than the hairs that you trim, pluck or shave every morning. The loss of some cells does not affect the whole mind. In fact, the whole mind might decide that apoptosis of some of its cells might be a good thing.

Grafting on a robot hand doesn’t do that, not even when the hand is wired directly into the nervous system. It doesn’t affect individuality at all.

Via Nourishing Obscurity, we can see where science plans to develop that hive mind and set the true Borg in motion.

All you get is the abstract unless you want to pay for the full paper, but the abstract is quite scary enough. Put that with the robot hand grafted into your nervous system (therefore wiring into the nervous system can already be done) and you have a communist/eugenecist wet dream. Every mind connected, everyone finally absolutely equal, no differentiation at all. No more ‘self’, everyone is expendable for the good of the whole.

Sound good? Well, those Borg on Star Trek were a very good prediction of where such a path leads. They do not invent nor do they innovate. They have no concepts of enjoyment or relaxation. They do their job and then they recharge so they can do it again. They create nothing. All they do is assimilate the inventions of other species, then assimilate the species. Once assimilated, the species invents nothing more. The Borg themselves are stagnant and blank. They offer nothing.

If there are too many to sustain, a group of them will self-terminate. It doesn’t matter which ones because they are all the same. The important parts (the implants) are recycled, the body destroyed and forgotten.

It’s what the Greens want for us, what the Medicals want, what the Righteous want, what all those worldwide groups want. A perfectly controlled population that is incapable of stepping out of line. A population whose size can be controlled with a simple instruction. Who will work and work and ask for nothing.

What they missed though, is that there was only one Borg queen in the story. Every one of those wishing for this world think they will be that Borg queen.

But most of them are already drones.