Cybernetic OpacityAgain, in a ship, if a man were at liberty to do what he chose, but were devoid of mind and excellence in navigation (αÏετης κυβεÏνητικης), do you perceive what must happen to him and his fellow sailors? (Plato, Alcibiades, 135A, cf. "Cybernetics", Wikipedia Review).
One of the things that took me a long time to tumble to — such is the power of words over wits — is that the Star Trek picture of 'Borg'Ville — y'know, Cubic Zirconia (CZ) — is really completely backwards from the way that Cybernetics is supposed to work in reality.
The term
Cybernetics is still used these days to refer to the science of control systems. The main thing about a control system is that it has (1) an actual state, (2) a desired state, (3) various ways of detecting the differences that may happen to exist between its actual state and its desired state, and (4) various ways of effecting changes of state, in particular, changes that move it from its actual state toward its desired state.
It is possible to distinguish two types of goals, or desired states, that a given cybernetic system may have. The desired state may be a state that the system has passed through before, and even spends the majority of its time in the neighborhood of, or it may be a state that the system has yet to achieve even once.
Now, there is nothing that says that a Hive Mind cannot be an adaptive, goal-directed system. Indeed, the capacity to adapt and to move relentlessly toward certain types of goals is always a part of the hackneyed science fiction story about the Borg.
But that is not the kind of Hive that we know in Wikipedia, which is more like a
Hive Of Ostriches (
HOO). Oddly enough, the danger of becoming a HOO is not unknown to at least some members of the wikipopulace — there is even a little known and less often invoked essay called
WP:OSTRICH that speaks to this very issue. Not too surprisingly, I see that it has been
nominated for deletion since the last time I looked.
Horton hears a HOO …
But the HOO does not hear Horton …
BOO HOO …
Jonny