Collaboration and Originality, Dr Nancy Roth

In the course of its intergalactic adventures, the crew of the Starship Enterprise occasionally encountered a cybernetic life form known as the Borg. The Borg are—or is—neither singular nor plural. Although they are recognizable bodies that move about and do things, they behave more like cells of a single animal than independent beings. As individuals, they have no convictions, no point of view. If one is sick or injured the relevant energies are reabsorbed into the hive-mind with no apparent regrets.

Within the fictional construct of the Star Trek, Borg are more highly evolved than humans. They don’t waste their energies fighting. They don’t compete. But they are repugnant and profoundly threatening because they do not make anything new. Instead of forging a history through dialogue and discourse as humans do, they parasitically absorb the cultures and technologies of other life forms.

If the crew of the Enterprise represents an idealized collaboration, the Borg articulate a fear that it all could go wrong. And if Star Trek as a whole perpetuates a great many untenable patriarchal and capitalist assumptions about the world, this one fear seems to resonate more deeply. The zeal for technically superb, efficient discourse could smooth out the oddities, peculiar histories and memories that make each human being unique. What would be lost then, it seems, is not riches or even power, but the peculiarly human capacity to make something new.