ike a lot of men my
age, and probably no
women, I’ve seen all the
Bond films. I started at a
young age, and despite now being
a full-grown adult, I am still looking
forward to the new one.
Bond has had a huge impact on
how people (men) perceive things
such as tailoring, luxury lifestyles
and cars. Would Aston Martin even
still exist were it not for Bond?
The other thing Bond has
stamped his mark on in the popular
imagination is tech. Really though,
when I say ‘tech’ here, I am thinking
of a less fashionable word:
‘gadgets’. Tech is sexy, serious and
worthy. Gadgets are fun... and
frequently ridiculous. Gadgets
defined the early years of T3,
when technology was a far more
niche interest, and the tech was
considerably more fun. Or crap,
depending on your degree of
rose-tinted hindsight.
Certainly, 007’s gadgets weren’t
for mundane tasks such as setting
a kitchen timer with your voice, or
using Instagram. They were, on the
whole, for killing people. Or at least
saving 007 from certain death.
They set the pulse racing
because they followed one of
Duncan’s Laws of Tech: stuff that
hasn’t come out yet is always way
more exciting than things that
actually exist. Right now, people
cannot read enough about the
Galaxy S20. They’re riveted by
every leak, rumour and iffy render.
As soon as it’s in shops, everyone
will yawn and say, ‘Oh, it’s just
another phone.’
Bond’s gadgets were the
ultimate example of not being out
yet, because not only were they not
available to the public, they were
generally impossible devices thatwould never
be available
to anyone.Premium Bond
Consider the crazy
gizmos Bond has deployed
over the years. In Live and Let Die,
Roger Moore uses a watch
containing a powerful magnet,
with a chainsaw in the bezel.
Can you imagine how dangerous
that would be to wear? At the very
least, Moore’s safari-influenced
suits would have been cut to
ribbons. Oh, and the magnet would
have rendered the watch incapable
of telling the time. Later, Pierce
Brosnan had a watch with a bloody
grappling hook in it. And an
invisible car!
Little wonder, then, that when
Bond was hard rebooted with the
arrival of Daniel Craig, Bond’s techdressed
in a Nehru-
collar jacket. Is it possible to make a
watch that can cause an explosion
big enough to destroy an
underground laboratory? No. But
it’s still more plausible than Nehru
jackets coming back into fashion.
This was all done with a knowing
wink to the past, and no wonder.
Bond is a has-been, and his
gadgets are never-weres. The sad
truth is that the serious, grown up
tech world took all its cues from
nerd staple Star Trek, not
problematic old 007.
Still, some of that Bond spirit
lives on, on crowdfunding sites.
Q could always move there if he’s
made redundant from MI6. The
pages for his products would all
start with enthusiastic and helpful
comments such as, ‘An exploding
pen, what a great idea! Could you
make it have a laser in it as well?’
Then once all the pledges had
poured in and the project was
500% funded (‘Early bird offer: buy
exploding pen in colour of your
choice and receive a FREE badge
that fires tranquilliser darts!’) the
comments would be full of punters
saying, ‘My pen arrived and I
immediately accidentally blew up
my expensive jacket by mistake. I
want a refund!’
Now that is how to give tech
back its licence to thrill.Q could always start a
crowdfunding project
if he’s made redundant
from MI6...
L
arsenal was slimmed down to a
very modestly souped-up Aston
and... a Sony camera phone.
Even when Q was reintroduced
in Skyfall, the young upstart openly
mocked the idea of exploding pens
and espoused using a Windows
laptop instead.
You can’t keep a good gadget
down, though. By the time Spectre
rolled around, the ‘gritty’, ‘rebooted’
Bond was again using an exploding
watch to take out a bad guyMARCH 2020 T3 29Opinion
Duncan Bell is
licensed to thrill
Did James Bond’s gadgets shape today’s tech
landscape? Not really, but I wish they had...