Borgification: When the Human Becomes Part of the Network

The Borg are a metaphor, not a prophecy

The Borg of Star Trek are a fictional collective whose members are technologically connected, operate as a network, and are subordinated to a shared consciousness. In popular culture they therefore became a powerful image of individuality being lost through technological integration. This article borrows the structural metaphor, not the story: body + technology + network + centralized dependence.

That methodological distinction must remain strict. No episode, film, or novel proves that real technology will produce the same social outcome. If science fiction is used as evidence, criticism becomes weak. Used as a thought experiment, however, it can sharpen the question of where useful connectivity ends and loss of sovereignty begins.

The term cyborg — cybernetic organism was introduced by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline in 1960 in the context of spaceflight. Their proposal was not a digital dictatorship but physiological adaptation to a hostile environment through systems that could automate some bodily functions. Historically, it is therefore wrong to equate every cyborg concept with the Borg, totalitarianism, or today’s networks.

Yet the original concept already contains a question that remains relevant: do we adapt the environment to the human being, or the human being to the technical environment? When the normal solution becomes redesigning the body so that it fits a system more efficiently, the moral starting point changes. Technology no longer only solves a limitation; it begins to define what a person ought to become.

This article uses borgification across three connected layers. The first is bodily: a sensor, implant, or interface becomes physically attached to a person. The second is identity: access to services, places, work, or payment is tied to biometric or digital proof of who one is. The third is network dependency: function depends on a server, account, protocol, manufacturer, authorized service channel, or remote infrastructure.

None of these layers by itself equals loss of freedom. The problem appears when they combine in a way that leaves no realistic alternative. The more intimate the technology, the more important a practical exit becomes. A right to choose that can be exercised only by losing employment, treatment, mobility, or access to an essential service is a very weak form of choice.

The Internet of Bodies already exists — but it is not one system

Researchers and policy analysts use the term Internet of Bodies (IoB) for a broad family of body-connected devices that contain software or computing capacity, collect or act on bodily data, and can communicate with a network. Wearables, medical sensors, implants, ingestible devices, and other connected systems can fall under the umbrella. RAND explicitly notes that there is no single universal definition of IoB.

This is an important boundary against sensationalism: the Internet of Bodies is not evidence of one centralized network for controlling humanity. It is a technological category emerging from many separate medical, consumer, and research systems. The critical question is not whether there is a secret master switch for every device, but what dependencies arise as more bodily functions migrate into connected infrastructure.

Connected medical technology can provide very real benefits. Remote cardiac monitoring, insulin pumps, neurostimulators, and other systems can reveal problems earlier, reduce visits, or enable treatment that would otherwise not exist. Criticism of network dependency must therefore never become an attack on people whose health depends on such technology.

The opposite should follow: if a device is medically essential, the user’s sovereignty deserves stronger protection. A patient should not carry greater risk merely because a medical device has become a software product. Security, long-term support, fallback plans, data portability, and responsibility when support ends should be part of medical quality, not corporate goodwill.

The FDA notes that medical devices are increasingly connected to the internet, hospital networks, and other devices. The same features that enable remote monitoring or updates can also create cybersecurity vulnerabilities that affect safety and effectiveness. Since 2023, U.S. law has required certain “cyber devices” to include plans for monitoring and addressing vulnerabilities and to provide software-component documentation.

This is a concrete reason why the boundary between the body and an IT system is becoming less clear. A software failure on a phone may disable an app. A software or security failure affecting a device involved in heart rhythm, drug delivery, or neural signalling can make digital security a form of bodily safety.

Firmware inside the body: the pacemaker example

In 2017 Abbott issued a firmware update for certain implanted pacemakers because of cybersecurity vulnerabilities associated with radio-frequency communication. The FDA handled the action as a correction/recall and explained that the goal was to reduce the risk of unauthorized access.

This is not evidence that anyone had taken control of patients, nor a reason to reject pacemakers. It is, however, historically significant: software updating became part of maintaining a device physically implanted in a person. In that world, “who controls the software?” is no longer merely a question about owning a computer.

For certain older MiniMed insulin pumps, the FDA warned in 2019 that an unauthorized person nearby could potentially connect wirelessly to a pump and alter settings and insulin delivery. The manufacturer therefore advised affected users to move to more secure models.

Again, the documented issue is not a Hollywood scenario of mass “body hacking,” but a specific cybersecurity vulnerability in a medical system. That is precisely why critical scrutiny is needed before similar connectivity logic is extended from treatment to healthy people for convenience or enhancement.

The most uncomfortable form of dependency appears when a technology stops being commercially attractive but the person cannot simply put it on a shelf. Users of the Argus II retinal system were left with implants whose support became limited after Second Sight ended development and entered financial difficulty; some sought spare external components from other users while others considered removal.

Modern neuroethics has therefore developed the concept of device abandonment. A consensus definition for implantable neurotechnology emphasizes responsibility for medical, technical, and financial support across the expected life of a device. Once technology is placed inside a body, a business model should no longer enjoy the same casual right to “end-of-life” a product that applies to an ordinary consumer gadget.

If the device is in my body, who is its functional owner?

Ownership of body technology is not only about who paid for the hardware. A user may physically carry an implant while firmware, service tools, cryptographic keys, data models, or diagnostic protocols remain under manufacturer control. Physical possession is therefore not necessarily functional sovereignty.

This article argues for a simple principle: the less separable a device is from the body, the less acceptable it becomes for essential function to depend on arbitrary licensing, closed servicing, or remote permission. Therapeutic systems can have legitimate safety reasons for controlled access, but long-term responsibility must be defined in advance rather than left to a future business strategy.

For an online service, changing terms, closing an account, or discontinuing a feature is normal. For a body-linked device, the same software culture becomes troubling. Should a function on which a person depends stop because a server closes, a certificate expires, or a manufacturer abandons a product?

This goes beyond the classic right to repair. It is a right to functional continuity of one’s own body. Life-critical or deeply integrated devices should have plans for support, safe offline operation, migration, reduced vendor dependency, or — where necessary — safe removal. An upgrade that makes a person less independent from commercial infrastructure is not self-evidently progress.

Criticism of digitalization must avoid collapsing different technologies into one story. Digital identity, biometrics, and a subcutaneous RFID implant are not the same thing. Under the current legal and technical framework, the European Digital Identity Wallet is an application/digital wallet on a personal device; the European Commission explicitly says its use is voluntary and there is no obligation for citizens to use a wallet.

That does not remove legitimate questions about digital identity, centralization, interoperability, tracking, or future access conditions — Digital Identity and Payments as Control Points addresses those issues directly. It does mean that we should criticize the system that actually exists, not invented properties. Calling a digital wallet a mandatory implant without evidence weakens the very critique that most needs precision.

Biometrics: a password you cannot simply replace

Current NIST digital-identity guidance warns that biometric characteristics are not secrets: a face can be photographed, latent fingerprints can be recovered from touched objects, and other traits can be captured with sensors. Biometric templates can be protected, but revocability is fundamentally more difficult than changing a password or cryptographic key.

As identity becomes more tightly tied to the body, sovereignty therefore changes character. A password can be replaced; a face, fingers, or iris cannot be “reset” in the same way. A bodily characteristic should not become a universal key whose compromise follows a person for life.

Small RFID/NFC implants in the hand are not science fiction. People voluntarily use them for door access, identification, and other close-range functions, while research literature also covers biomedical NFC/RFID systems. A typical passive implant, however, is not a GPS transmitter and is not a brain interface. It belongs to a very different technical class.

This is another case where both naïveté and exaggeration should be rejected. The fact that a chip does not magically track a person across the planet does not make normalization of implantable identifiers ethically trivial. Bodily integrity, security, removal, workplace pressure, and purpose remain legitimate questions.

A technological choice can remain voluntary on paper while becoming economically coercive in practice. The European Parliament examined RFID implants for workers in 2018 and highlighted privacy, human-rights, data-protection, and genuine-voluntariness concerns. Several U.S. states prohibit compulsory microchipping.

A particularly recent example is Washington State: a law effective in June 2026 prohibits employers from requesting, requiring, or coercing an employee to receive a subcutaneous microchip. The law specifically excludes medical devices used for diagnosis, monitoring, or treatment when they transmit only information necessary for those purposes. That is almost exactly the boundary defended by THY-REALITY: treatment is not the same as identity or workplace implantation.

When the network enters the workplace through the body and nervous system

The next boundary does not necessarily require an implant. Wearable neurotechnologies and neuroergonomics can monitor some physiological or brain signals during work. Literature published in 2026 highlights concerns about neural-data privacy, discrimination, and coercion if systems begin evaluating attention, fatigue, or productivity.

The danger here is subtler than a forced chip. An employee may “voluntarily” accept a sensor because without it they are less competitive, cannot access a role, or receive a lower performance rating. Borgification can begin as a contract clause rather than an operation. Bodily and mental privacy therefore need protection against soft forms of economic pressure as well.

Claims about institutional plans can be tested against institutions’ own documents. DARPA publicly described its N3 — Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology programme as an effort to develop high-performance bidirectional brain–machine interfaces for able-bodied service members, with potential applications including computer teaming, cyber defence, and control of unmanned systems. The programme is now complete.

The UK defence paper Human Augmentation – The Dawn of a New Paradigm likewise examined genetic, neurotechnological, and other forms of human augmentation in 2021, but with an important disclaimer: it is an analytical think-piece, not official government or Ministry of Defence policy or strategy. That is the correct evidentiary standard: there is documented defence interest in human augmentation; this does not prove a single secret plan to implant the general population.

For a person with paralysis, the answer to “why a BCI?” may be clear: communication, movement, greater independence. For a healthy person the threshold should be much higher. If the reason is merely faster computer control, productivity, or competitive advantage, the body is being adapted to the demands of a system rather than the system being adapted to the person.

This is where the project’s critical stance becomes explicit. Human development does not have to be equated with increasing bandwidth between brain and machine. Learning, physical capacity, discipline, creativity, relationships, sustained attention, and exploration of consciousness are forms of development that do not require corporate firmware to remain part of who a person has become. A technological shortcut is not necessarily human progress.

A network does not need a “collective mind” to steer behaviour

Real network power is often more mundane than science fiction. A system does not need direct access to thoughts if data, defaults, recommendations, prices, access rules, and scoring can shape the decision environment strongly enough. The articles from Who Controls the Data About Us? to Artificial Intelligence: Tool, Adviser or New Authority? already examined how data, algorithms, digital identity, and automated authority create an architecture of choice.

If body sensors or implants eventually join that architecture, the intimacy of data and the cost of exit increase. That is still not a Borg collective mind. But it can become a tighter feedback loop among body, behaviour, and infrastructure controlled by someone else. Criticism does not need fantasy; analysing the actual power relationship is enough.

Many technologies spread not through force but because they are convenient. One login instead of ten, one sensor instead of manual measurement, automatic payment instead of a wallet. With body-connected systems the benefit can be even greater. Convenience itself is not the problem.

The problem begins when convenience becomes infrastructural lock-in: alternatives slowly disappear, services begin to assume use of the system, and exit becomes disproportionately costly. The most resilient system is not one that promises it will never be abused; it is one a person can still leave.

THY-REALITY therefore defends a right not to enhance as a practical rather than merely formal right. A person who refuses an unnecessary implant should still be able to work, travel, pay, study, and participate in society without punitive barriers whenever a safe non-invasive alternative exists.

This principle is not anti-technology. It opposes a coercive technological anthropology — the idea that a person must change their body because a system has been designed to treat the unmodified human as obsolete. Technology that genuinely serves people must be able to tolerate a person’s decision not to install it inside themselves.

A human-sovereignty test: ten questions before connecting the body to a network

Before any body-connected technology, ten questions are worth asking: What does it treat or solve? Is there a less invasive alternative? Who holds the data? Does it work without the internet? Who can change the firmware? Who can restrict or revoke function? What happens if the vendor fails? Are repair and removal guaranteed? Can a person refuse without losing an essential opportunity? And does the technology increase their independence ten years from now — not only on day one?

These questions will not produce the same answer for a pacemaker and a chip used to open workplace doors, nor for a speech BCI and a hypothetical productivity implant. That is their value. Critical analysis distinguishes; propaganda throws everything into one box — either as miraculous progress or as universal conspiracy.

Borgification is useful only if it leads us back from fiction to the real question of sovereignty. Medicine can legitimately use advanced technology for treatment and restoration. But successful treatment does not imply that a healthy person must become a node on a network in order to count as advanced, productive, or a full member of future society.

Human potential is not exhausted by today’s measurable performance, but that does not mean it must be unlocked with an implant or subscription. THY-REALITY argues for the opposite hierarchy: develop the human being first; connect technology where it genuinely serves the person — do not connect the person to technology as a requirement. A free future is not a future without devices. It is a future in which a device does not gain the power to decide whether a person without it is still human enough.