Upon hearing the phrase “Underwater Borg Home,” many would imagine living inside cybernetic undersea creatures such as a whale, though the biological creature has been extinct for some 40 years. Even L. H. Baltimore, CEO of Replitech, the company that developed the current Borg Home model admits, “Twenty years ago, when our research and development team came to me with this idea of an underwater borg home, I chuckled: ‘we are not going to live inside the stomach of a whale like Pinocchio and his father, are we?’… for one thing, I can assure you that the living space inside a Borg Home certainly provides a much greater level of comfort than the inside of a whale’s stomach.” Though on the outside, the Borg Home does carry some resemblance to a whale, it is rarely the extinct creature’s cybernetically modified counterpart. It lacks most of the organ system that are found in biological creatures, in a conventional sense, at least. For instance, its “nervous system”—the central—is an intricate centralized computer system.
The Borg Home is no ordinary machine. It is a cyborg in the sense that it is made of hybrids of biological and mechanical substances—created by implanting cybernetics, namely self-replicating nanobots into a biological material the company called “the Core.” The self-replicating nanobots parasites in the living organism; it functions and replicates in mechanisms similar to those of biological viruses. Via implanted cybernetics and networks, the function and behavior of the nanobots are controlled by the central. The nanobot’s own computer can be reprogrammed using a wireless programming device. Once these self-replicating nanobots workers reach a certain mass, their original tasks can be modified and their functions are diversified. The swarms of nanobots begin to process resources, build larger-structures and sophisticated mechanical/electrical components, such as a communication system or building additional nanobots—all from an atomic scale.
Such methodology of self-replication is not uncommon in the 22nd century. The most groundbreaking aspect of the Borg Home is its ability to replicate itself, or in a more precise term, to reproduce. Baltimore calls it “a reproducible home.” “If biological beings can generate offspring, why can’t a cyborg?,” Baltimore says. The Borg Home is the first “cyborg” on the market that is able to reproduce. However, its most featured aspect has sparked many controversies. Baltimore comments, “For some reason, people are just uncomfortable with the idea of the cyborg being able to reproduce, even though there are no apparent threats or dangers. The technology has been around for three or four years. We are just the first ones to take the risk.” Like certain viruses can be inherited by an offspring, the reproduced cyborg contains the nanobots implanted in its parents.
Inside the Nanotechnology
Each Borg is made up of tens of trillions of self-replicating nanobots. Their function and behavior are essential to the “survival” of a Borg.
The self-replicating nanobots function loosely models the behavior biological viruses, parasiting on the organic parts of the cyborg. The upside: the nanobots are reproduced in all of the cell’s offspring. While biological viruses often consist of genetic materials, a nanobot’s “genetic materials” are essentially its programming codes. Each nanobot is essentially a tiny computer.
What are these tiny computers made of? Like most nanorobots on the market today, the replibots inside the Borg are constructed from arrays of carbon nanotubes. These allotropes of carbons are comprised of hexagonal arrays of carbon atoms assembled into a three dimensional cylinder. The unique structure of carbon nanotube provides it with novel properties. Aside from processing extraordinary strength, carbon nanotubes are capable of providing electronic functions because of its unique electrical properties. By adding impurities in a precise manner, the material can be used to create various electronic components. Mechanical systems be also be constructed from these unique arrays of carbon atoms.
The nanobot swarm’s operation mechanism is inspired by “universal assembly” theory drawn up by Eric Drexler, one of the most influential figures in the development of nanotechnology over a century ago. It employs the modified Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) architecture (The original SIMD was proposed by Eric Drexler and his colleague Ralph Merkle in the mid 1990s) :
- the centralized data storage system, or simply the central as we now call it, transmits sequences of commands simultaneously to all of the initial assembly robots (over a trillion of them). As a result, the assemblers need not store the entire program for creating the desired product.
- Each assembly robot executes the instructions at the same time. They construct molecular robots according to the “broadcasted” commands. The assembler has the capability to create additional copies of the robots by using the existing ones. The process would go on until it reaches a certain number of nanobots.
- After the required number is reached, the nanobots “diversifies” its functions: each swarm of local robot has an exclusive data storage that specifies its mechanism/function. Each swarm follow a specific part of the central “broadcast”. There is a level of customization despite the fact that all nanobots receive the same commands: the assemblers only follows the assembling instructions and the specified nanobots are programmed to strictly follow another sequence in the broadcast. Each robot can collects individual carbon atoms and extracts source of chemical fuel from the source material.
The source material is a gaseous fluid transport by the Borg’s circulatory system. Yes, the Borg does have a circulatory system. Its key function: to move about substances, including the gaseous source material to bio-cells and replibots. Inside the cyborg are billions of nano-sized vessels that transport the gaseous fluid. This "broadcast" architecture also addresses a key safety concern by shutting down the self-replication process if it got out of control by terminating the centralized source of the replication instructions. . The nanobot’s own computer can be reprogrammed using a wireless programming device.
