Star Trek and History (33 page)

The Borg are an advanced collective found in multiple episodes, and one movie, of the
Star Trek
series. It is their goal to attain perfection by assimilating as many races and species as they can. They try to absorb the weapons, technologies, and skills of everyone they come across. Perhaps their entire mission statement can be summed up by the famous quote, “Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile” (
Star Trek: First Contact
). The Borg are a nuisance to be dealt with in every series except the first
Star Trek
series, although
Voyager
sees them in action more than any other series.
The Next Generation
creators stated that the reason the Borg were used so rarely in the show was that they were overpoweringly superior to the Federation's defenses, and it was difficult to write ways out of a Borg attack.
22

While not everyone finds Facebook addicting, there are many people who do. According to the Nielsen Social Media Report, computer users in the United States spend more time on Facebook than on any other website.
23
It is the constant urge to be connected that draws most people to it. Currently Facebook has over 750 million users, with approximately 50 percent of those users logging in on any given day. About 33.3 percent of these users access Facebook via their phones. These users also spend about seven hundred
billion
minutes on Facebook a month.
24
The younger generations tend to appreciate Facebook even more than the older ones, as the instantaneous exchange of information is necessary, or else they'll get bored. Patience is no longer just a virtue; it's a four-leaf clover in a barren field.

Perhaps it's time for some direct comparison. Facebook's actual mission statement asserts that “Facebook's mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”
25
The Borg Queen, through technological improvements, gives the Borg the ability to share what is happening through a psychiclike link that also keeps them connected. Zuckerberg actually uses the term
connect
a lot throughout Facebook documents. After all, that is Facebook's goal: the connection of the human race. Another interesting fact about Facebook is that its platform allows other websites (currently 2.5 million) to “integrate” with it, thus assuring “your culture will be adapted to service us.”
26
Like the Borg, Facebook also has a knack for taking existing technology and improving upon it. In an attempt to “increase the user experience” (read: get some of its users back) AOL created software that connected AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) to Facebook Chat. Those who used the software conducted their conversations under their Facebook ID, rather than their AIM screen name, forcing AOL to accept that, truly, resistance is futile.
27

Another parallel is reflected in the old real estate phrase “location, location, location.” The first action the Borg take against the
Enterprise
in
Star Trek: First Contact
is to go for their maps. “This is not coincidental—maps and power are complementary.”
28
Zuckerberg is also aware of how important it is to know information about different areas for advancement and expansion. Although Facebook started in the United States, almost 70 percent of its users are from different countries.
29
Maps are crucial to any expanding empire.

Perhaps
Star Trek
knew the fate of the world when it introduced the Borg. If anything, they symbolize the very human desire to convert people to our ideological beliefs and “teach” them our ways. This is what the human heart wants most: understanding. We want others to know what we know, to feel how we feel. That's the power the Internet gives us. Not only do we get instantaneous transfer of news and information but also of hopes, dreams, and emotions.

The biggest downfall of a hivemind, a collective consciousness like the one the Borg belong to, is the loss of originality. The Facebook page is available in only one design, one color scheme. This makes the site more uniform and navigable. It makes it simple and easy. As the Borg would say, it makes it “perfect.” Everything becomes bleak and gray after a while since the primary goal is efficiency rather than presentation. While this is a logical course of action, it is rarely ever the ideal course of action.

Of course, the Borg are too advanced and powerful a group to be described by just one website. While the Borg do seem like the endgame result of social media, it is more accurate to compare them to the dreaded event forecast in the concept of the “Technological Singularity.” The term was coined by Vernor Vinge in 1993, but the general idea can be dated as far back as Turing: “Once the machine thinking method has started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers.”
30
The Singularity foresees a future date when all of the world's knowledge and information will be contained in a single machine.
31

The coming of the Singularity is implicitly predicted by Moore's Law, a law that states that technology will approximately double in power and capabilities every twenty-four months, while also decreasing in size. This law is named after Intel cofounder Gordon E. Moore, who wrote an article published in 1965 describing the phenomenon.
32
Moore predicted that technology would keep improving in terms of power, based on the falling cost of components and the increase of components per device (in Moore's case a silicon chip). The law was modified slightly in 1975 (changing the projection of doubling from twelve months to twenty-four months) and has remained true for nearly half a century since. At this rate, it is expected that technology will have the ability to store the entire collection of human knowledge (that is, every bit of known data on the planet) around the 2040s. Are the Borg far behind?

While we don't yet have the Borg, or even Data, we have long since achieved and surpassed every function of the
Star Trek
communicators. We have automatic doors. Our current PDAs and iPads rival, and in most aspects exceed, the capabilities of the PADDs, which were staples in intergalactic travel in
Star Trek
since at least 2060. IBM's Watson, arguably one of our most advanced AI machines, is undergoing an installation of memory that would allow it to hold 20 petabytes more than Data. We are advancing rapidly, even more rapidly than Gene Roddenberry could have imagined in the 1960s. Still, there are algorithms to solve and there are data to be plotted: we may even reach the singularity. All that's known is that the future is wild, and as long as
Star Trek
remains a cherished artifact of human history, it will inspire new generations of IT professionals.

Notes

1.
The speed of light is unsurpassable. The basic warp speed, “Warp 1,” is equivalent to the speed of light. There are about twenty superior warp speeds, each surpassing light speed using a cubic equation in
Star Trek
. For
The Next Generation
and on, a new scale was created and used by Mike Okuda (art and special effects director for
TNG
), limiting the warp factor to 10 (9.999 before needing infinite energy). M. Bret Godfrey, “Engineering Department: Warp Speed Defined,”
Star-fleet.com
, Online Star Trek Roleplaying, December 20, 2008,
http://www.star-fleet.com/ed/warp-chart.html
.

2.
Roddenberry gave many lectures throughout the 1970s and 1980s. “Gene Roddenberry Founder Bio,” the Roddenberry Foundation,
http://www.roddenberryfoundation.org/
.

3.
Don Savage, “NASA Presents Public Service Medal to Gene Roddenberry,”
NASA.gov
,
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/1993/93–019.txt
.

4.
“Douglas S. Morrow Public Outreach Award,” 26th National Space Symposium, National Space
Symposium.org
,
http://2010.nationalspacesymposium.org/about-the-show/symposium-awards/douglas-s-morrow-public-outreach-award
.

5.
“Awards for Gene Roddenberry,” Internet Movie Database (IMDb),
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0734472/awards
.

6.
Ethlie Ann Vare and Greg Ptacek,
Patently Female: From AZT to TV Dinners: Stories of Women Inventors and Their Breakthrough Ideas
(Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2002), 21–22.

7.
Peter Ha, “Motorola StarTAC—All-TIME 100 Gadgets,”
TIME.com
,
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2023689_2023708_2023670,00.html
.

8.
Bill Buxton, “Multi-Touch Systems That I Have Known and Loved,” Bill
Buxton.com
,
http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html
.

9.
Benj Edwards, “From Paper Tape to Data Sticks: The Evolution of Removable Storage,”
PCWorld.com
,
http://www.pcworld.com/article/188661/from_paper_tape_to_data_sticks_the_evolution_of_removable_storage.html
.

10.
Peter Ha, “DiskOnKey—All-TIME 100 Gadgets,”
TIME.com
,
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2023689_2023703_2023613,00.html
.

11.
Julian Jones, director,
How William Shatner Changed the World,
Discovery Channel, November 13, 2005.

12.
Gary B. Shelly,
Discovering Computers: A Link to the Future, World Wide Web Enhanced
(Cambridge, MA: Course Technology, 1997).

13.
Nathan Ensmenger,
The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 223–243.

14.
“The All-Singing, All-Dancing Female Robot That Can Now Be Operated Using Just a Mouse,” Daily Mail Online,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1321260/The-new-singing-dancing-robot-operated-using-just-mouse.html
.

15.
Alan Ross Anderson,
Minds and Machines
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1980), 43–59.

16.
Alan M. Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,”
Mind
49:433–460.

17.
Joseph R. Stetter, “Sensor Arrays, Artificial Senses, Awareness, Intelligence,” SlideShare.net,
http://www.slideshare.net/artintelligence/sensor-arrays-artificial-senses-awareness-intelligence
.

18.
“Fordham University: Robotics & Computer Vision Laboratory,” Fordham University,
http://www.cis.fordham.edu/~lyons/rcvlab_projects.html
.

19.
Steve Meloan, “Futurama: Using Java Technology to Build Robots That Can See, Hear, Speak, and Move,” Oracle Technology Network for Java Developers,
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Programming/robotics/
.

20.
Dave Rosenberg, “IBM Goes for Really, Really, Really Big Data,” Technology News—CNET News,
http://news.cnet.com/8301–13846_3–20098312–62/ibm-goes-for-really-really-really-big-data/
.

21.
John Roach, “How IBM's Watson Will Make Money,” Cosmic Log, MSNBC,
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/18/6081605-how-ibms-watson-will-make-money
.

22.
“Borg,” Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki,
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Borg
.

23.
“Nielsen: Social Media Report Q3 2011,”
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/social/
.

24.
“Statistics: Facebook,”
http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
.

25.
“Facebook: Info,”
http://www.facebook.com/facebook?sk=info
.

26.
“Statistics: Facebook,”
http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
.

27.
Rachel Metz, “AOL Integrates Facebook Chat with AIM,”
Sydney Morning Herald,
February 10, 2010,
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-technology/aol-integrates-facebook-chat-with-aim-20100210-nrvi.html
.

28.
See the chapter by Matt Mingus in this volume: “Why
Star Trek
's Cartography Is So Stellar, or How the Borg Mapped/Changed Everything.”

29.
“Statistics: Facebook,”
http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
.

30.
Alan Turing, “Intelligent Machinery, A Heretical Theory,”
Philosophia Mathematica
4, no. 3 (1996): 256–260.

31.
Ray Kurzweil,
The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
(New York: Viking, 2005), 1–6.

32.
Gordon E. Moore, “Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits,”
Electronics
38, no. 8 (1965): 4.

Marcus Schulzke

The crew of the starship
Enterprise
“boldly go where no one has gone before,” but they also return to where countless others have already been. For a television program about the future,
Star Trek
is surprisingly concerned with the past. The characters in each series are as committed to exploring time as they are to exploring space. They continually return to the past through simulations and actual time travel. In doing so, the crew discovers history on a personal level, experiencing the sights and sounds, and even the dangers, of the past. This chapter focuses on imagined history in
Star Trek
by examining holodeck simulations of the past in episodes of
The Next Generation
.