Borg Data Handling & the “Infinitely Indexed Memory Bank"

[Platonian]

Any of you familiar with a classic sci-fi movie from 1956, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers? You may be so if for no other reason than the amazing flying saucers created by the master of stop-motion animation, Ray Harryhausen. But that’s not the subject of my inquiry. Rather, it’s a nasty bit of technology from the movie, the “infinitely indexed memory bank.”

This device appears to have been a bit like the Klingons’ TOS-era mind scanner (alternatively sifter or ripper), certainly in terms of side effects.
From Earth vs. the Flying Saucers:

We have transferred (emphasis added) all knowledge from his brain to our machine. Thus, we have available and readily accessible his total experience. We can do this to as many as we like and learn whatever we must know.

From "Errand of Mercy":

It's a mind-sifter or mind-ripper, depending on how much force is used. We can record (emphasis added) every thought, every bit of knowledge in a man's mind. Of course, when that much force is used, the mind is emptied. Permanently, I'm afraid. What's left is more vegetable than human.

A difference, though, was how the aliens of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers handled the data they acquired. Rather than just recording information, as the Klingons apparently did with the mind scanner, the EvtFS beings appear to have incorporated the data so acquired into what seems to be a “collective consciousness” (they are quite pleased with themselves that they could do this). The difference is perhaps, very roughly, like that between how a data file and an executable file are used. Such a “collective consciousness” is, by the way, never acknowledged per se in the movie, but the aliens’ comments and actions suggest this possibility.

To me, the approach to data handling by the EvtFS beings seems rather like the Borg’s – though the method for acquiring it is, of course, different – specifically, the incorporation of the experience of the individual into the “collective consciousness.” No sense of individuality is retained by the Borg, of course, but the former individual’s “total experience” is shared by all. Thus is seems with the EvtFS aliens.

I make no claim of a relationship between Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and the Borg (the Klingons’ TOS-era mind scanner, maybe). I just find these methods for handling information as part of the workings of a larger “collective consciousness” interesting.