Borg

:This article is about the fictional race of aliens. For other uses, see Borg (disambiguation).

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 The Next Generation, now that the Klingons were friends, and the Romulans mostly absent. Originally intended as the new enemy for the United Federation of Planets, 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 reassigned the role of annoying but cute comic relief characters. A new militaristic 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 vision that technology will eventually transform humanity into monsters.

Related Topics:
Klingon - Romulan - Ferengi - Luddite - Prophecy

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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 a "drone" or "borg". Borg is also occasionally used as a slang verb, meaning to take over or absorb something. Example: "Steve borged (with a hard G) my CD collection, making copies of almost every disc I own."

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Sometimes, someone is refered to as being 'Of Borg', indicating they are aggressive in taking over something, e.g. "Microsoft of Borg." This is in reference to the maxim "Resistance is Futile".

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Shortly after the introduction of the Pentium microprocessor, a floating-point arithmetic glitch was found which affected the accuracy of calculations, leading to the joke, "We are Pentium of Borg. Division is Futile - You will be approximated."

Related Topics:
Pentium - Floating-point arithmetic - Glitch

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