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Christopher Warnock, Esq.

The Matrix for further discussion of man/machine consciousness

Begin transmission RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED... RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED...RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED... RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED... RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED...RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED... RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED...RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED...

I have enjoyed the various Star Trek plot lines involving the Borg, a species with a collective mind in which individuals are combinations of man and machine. The Borg roam space indiscriminately assimilating the knowledge and bodies of other species and adding them to the Borg Collective. Science fiction often says more about present day culture than the future that it ostensibly represents. The Borg, repugnant as they may be to our "individualistic" culture represent a logical extension of modern conditions. The term "borg" apparently comes from cyborg, itself a shortened version of cybernetic organism. The most characteristic fictional cyborg is probably the infamous "Six Million Dollar Man" starring Lee Majors as an ex-astronaut with an electronic super eye and arm. A cyborg therefore represents an amalgam of man and machine, a hybrid of robot, all machine, and man in his natural state.
Our society is, in fact, dominated by the Borg in the guise of our omnipresent automobile culture. This is no doubt a confusing notion for many. However, the Borg concept helps explain much car/driver behavior. For example, most pedestrians manage to stand and quietly wait at a stop sign. They don't start shoving and shouting at a moment's delay. Contrast this with Borg behavior in traffic. Borgs immediately get impatient at a stop, start honking and gunning their engines. A car being driven is actually the amalgam of a biological control unit with a steel skinned chassis capable and in fact insistent on high speed.
When I think back to my driver's ed days this becomes even more clear. One of my worst difficulties with driving was parallel parking; I couldn't seem to maneuver the car into the parking spot. What I was failing to do was intuitively feel where the car was. I had not broken down the barrier between human and machine necessary for Borg functioning. A good example of this assimilation is the angry response that drivers have to attacks on their car bodies. They react as if they have been personally assaulted when, of course, the Borg has been.
The Borg concept helps explain road rage. Outside of cars most of us act as if we are slow and soft skinned. We stand quietly on the Metro for example, waiting for other passengers to get on and off. As a Borg, however, we are metallic, we have the ability, wait we have the right to go 60, 70, 80 miles an hour. WE WILL NOT BE IMPEDED. WE WILL NOT WAIT. WE CANNOT TOLERATE DELAY.

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The Borg are rather unintelligent, as well. They have difficulty with anything more sophisticated than go on green and stop on red. (The number of Borg that ignore the special light for turning right on Connecticut Ave at Calvert St, N.W. always amazes me). They only respect other Borg and are prone to ignore even their more human Borg cousins the motorcycles, let alone the slow, soft Borg-less biological control units that scuttle out of their way.
Car borgs are the latest in a long history of human/machine interaction, but they represent a stage where the machine element has become dominant. Roller blades, for example, are predominately human. Bicycles are about half human. Any tool, in fact, has borg-like qualities, marrying human and machine and creating a new being with more than merely basic human skills and predilections. The added skill or ability, however, creates not only the possibility but also the unconscious desire to be used. The machine qualities of the Borg often seem dominate over the human qualities of the driver. Anyone who doubts this should consider that we have destroyed innumerable urban neighborhoods and rural farms, converted two thirds of Los Angeles into roads, parking lots or other auto-related uses, erected the largest public works project in history, the Interstate Highway System, and drastically changed the nature of our society in innumerable ways in order to accommodate the Borg.
Increasing mechanical organization and integration is a process that is evident throughout human history and even is apparent in animal societies. Ants, bees and termites are irrelevant as individuals. They live in huge cities with a highly organized caste system. They wage war, have slaves, cultivate food and ants even keep domesticated aphids. Similarly our cities are teeming hives of millions of integrated individuals, huge organic machines whose collective actions are more significant than that of any individual. Increasingly we merge with our machines and the amalgamated organic/machine units that result have a machine-like consciousness and mechanical unconscious urges and drives different than those of unintegrated humans.


RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED...RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED...RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED... RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED... RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED...RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED... RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED...RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED... end transmission



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Specializing in Horary Astrology, Electional Astrology Astrological Magic and Astrological Talismans.

Copyright 2000, Christopher Warnock, All Rights Reserved.