Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and love all things tech. And it is time to
Speaker 1: continue our story about spy technology. We started that in
Speaker 1: the classic episode last week. This is another classic episode,
Speaker 1: this one published on January eight, two thousand and fourteen,
Speaker 1: and we take another look at spy tech, both fictional
Speaker 1: and realistic. Let's take a listen. So supposedly John D,
Speaker 1: the sixteenth century science guy Dr John D, may have
Speaker 1: been the first double O seven to perform espionage in
Speaker 1: the royal service. He served as an advisor to the
Speaker 1: Queen and reportedly signed his messages with two zero's symbolizing
Speaker 1: his job as the Queen's eyes um, followed by a
Speaker 1: seven with the top drawn out over the zeros that
Speaker 1: the number seven reportedly having some kind of occult meaning
Speaker 1: to d Um. So his code name, if you will,
Speaker 1: was double O seven Yeah, and that you can uh find.
Speaker 1: And we actually have an article all about James Bond
Speaker 1: at How Stuff Works. You can learn more about the
Speaker 1: background and the supposed mythology behind it. By the way,
Speaker 1: I've got another trivia tidbit about Dr John D. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Did you know that? According to HP Lovecraft, Dr John
Speaker 1: D was the man responsible for translating the Necronomicon into English,
Speaker 1: although that translation was never found I did not. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's jump into the James Bond series. Now, when
Speaker 1: we last we left off, we had worked our way
Speaker 1: up to Moonraker, the nineteen seventy nine film, and yes
Speaker 1: we are in the middle of Roger Moore's um the
Speaker 1: best James Bond ever. As I mentioned in the last one,
Speaker 1: George lazenby close second Roger Moore, Man, you can I
Speaker 1: could just hear the frustrated squeals of of James Bond
Speaker 1: fans everywhere placed Timothy Dalton, just just trying not to
Speaker 1: kill you with their minds. Oh it's fine, it's fine.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. So Moonraker head, this was the era where
Speaker 1: the Roger Moore era, where the gadgets really started going crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We keep in mind Lauren and I met before we
Speaker 1: came in to record this, where we cut a bunch
Speaker 1: of gadgets because we just for time. There's just too many.
Speaker 1: And in this particular era alone, I think like sixty
Speaker 1: of our cuts came from these, right, So starting off,
Speaker 1: we have a wrist dart gun with poison tipped darts
Speaker 1: are also armor piercing darts, so we had two different types.
Speaker 1: And there are lots of electronic dart guns that have
Speaker 1: been created over the past, including a well there's one
Speaker 1: that was not even this was an electric It was
Speaker 1: actually a bullet one. It was a gun gun. There
Speaker 1: was a glove mounted gun, so the barrel of gun
Speaker 1: was actually on the palm side, and it was designed
Speaker 1: so that when you would make a fist and punch something,
Speaker 1: the gun which the barrel would hopefu clear your knuckles,
Speaker 1: would fire off. And the idea being that it was
Speaker 1: developed in World War two by the OSS and the
Speaker 1: idea is that, you know, if you were to create
Speaker 1: the sort of thing and show a person punching someone
Speaker 1: else and the other person dies as a result of
Speaker 1: being punched, it would scare the heck out of your enemies, like, wow,
Speaker 1: they are so strong. But here's the thing didn't work
Speaker 1: so well, so hardly anyone ever fired one of these things.
Speaker 1: There are some interesting pictures online of the various gun gloves. Uh.
Speaker 1: So there have been people who have tried to make
Speaker 1: this kind of technology work, but no one's really done
Speaker 1: it in such a way that it was ever practical.
Speaker 1: So risk dart gun not necessarily practical. There's probably other
Speaker 1: ways you could, you know, someone's life starts out other
Speaker 1: kind of impractical thing. A cigarette case with an X
Speaker 1: ray safe cracking device. Yeah, I'm not sure how you
Speaker 1: would fit X ray scanning technology into the form factor
Speaker 1: of a cigarette case. That sounds impossible. It sounds pretty
Speaker 1: hard to me. Yeah, also had a wristwatch. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of wristwatches in James Bond. That's one of
Speaker 1: the things that we ended up cutting some of them
Speaker 1: because there's so many. They were like, yeah, we we've already.
Speaker 1: But anyway, this particular wristwatch had a detonator refused and
Speaker 1: an explosive charge built into it, which, again, that's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff to pack into a tiny form factor.
Speaker 1: Now I can totally understand a detonator in a watch.
Speaker 1: A transmitter, that's something that I could, you know, especially
Speaker 1: once you get into the transistor era, and we're well
Speaker 1: into it now in nine. Transistors are definitely a thing.
Speaker 1: When you get into that mantorization where you press a
Speaker 1: button and it sends out a radio signal. I totally
Speaker 1: get that, but being able to build in all this
Speaker 1: other stuff so that it can contain everything is a
Speaker 1: little on the science fiction side. Yeah, that's that's dicey
Speaker 1: in terms of physics. There was also something showing off
Speaker 1: in queues laboratory that disturbed me. Are you are you
Speaker 1: talking about the Mexican machine gun. Yeah, the Mexican machine gun.
Speaker 1: It's so this is problematic, so that while showing what,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of the scenes show que walking
Speaker 1: through the laboratory and some outlandishly ridiculous gadget is going
Speaker 1: off in the background. Yeah, just completely without comment, just
Speaker 1: that's just happening. Occasionally they might stop, Oh have you
Speaker 1: seen this double O seven. It's a Mexican machine gun
Speaker 1: and it looks like a well, it looks like a mannequin.
Speaker 1: It is a mannequin of a person wearing like a
Speaker 1: sombrero and taking a cs to like like a troubling
Speaker 1: lye racist mannequin. Yeah, and then the chest opens up,
Speaker 1: revealing a machine gun that fires off. So yeah, that
Speaker 1: was a little problematic. And then there, of course, is
Speaker 1: the character of Holly Goodhead, who had lots of gadgets.
Speaker 1: She was a CIA agent in Moonraker, and she had
Speaker 1: her own weapons, which included a pen, a notebook, and perfume.
Speaker 1: It was a poison pen, it was, it was a
Speaker 1: dart shooting note back. All women, it was flamethrower, perfume.
Speaker 1: Every I'm sure you have some at your desk. It's
Speaker 1: probably pink too, because we all know what ladies like, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. The the To be fair, the James Bond
Speaker 1: franchise has never been accused of being forward thinking as
Speaker 1: far as women are concerned. Yeah, that's that's or or
Speaker 1: race when it comes to that. No, there's some terrible examples,
Speaker 1: but we're what of course, we're constant on the gadgets,
Speaker 1: not the not the social commentary. So moving up to one,
Speaker 1: we're still with Roger Moore. Still yeah, for your eyes only.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, it's not just for my eyes, Lauren. It
Speaker 1: was for the world's eyes. Oh you're talking about the
Speaker 1: title of the movie. Okay, yes, for your eyes on
Speaker 1: the yes, um. They introduced a computer like device called
Speaker 1: the identograph in this which was interesting. The idea was
Speaker 1: that you could create a composite picture of a person
Speaker 1: by adding or removing distinguishing features on a computer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of like, no, the nose is bigger, No, no,
Speaker 1: the eyes are wider. Set that kind of thing, which
Speaker 1: is totally something we can do now. Yeah. Yeah, facial
Speaker 1: composition techniques have been in use for for decades and
Speaker 1: decades at this point, but um, I don't think that
Speaker 1: we got a digital version until the late nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: So this is kind of again another sort of predictive technology,
Speaker 1: but it's certainly something that has been used since. We
Speaker 1: still have you know, uh like a sketch artists who
Speaker 1: work with police departments too. But now there are also
Speaker 1: these technologies that let people uh kind of mix and
Speaker 1: match basic features where you get a general idea of
Speaker 1: what someone might look like based upon a description. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's great, uh, great artistic technology. Um. Also in
Speaker 1: this film, we had an update to the communications first watch,
Speaker 1: I think last we had kind of a ticker tape
Speaker 1: sort of thing going on, um, and this one could
Speaker 1: receive digital messages and be used like a walkie talkie,
Speaker 1: which is fantastic because it meant that Roger Moore could
Speaker 1: clear out all that extra space in his hollow arm
Speaker 1: for the battery that would be necessary to run this device. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, for those who don't get that joke, you
Speaker 1: need to listen to the other podcast, the other episode.
Speaker 1: Of course, these days that's totally a thing we have
Speaker 1: in pockets all the time. But but yes, at the time,
Speaker 1: it was still a little bit forward thinking. We wouldn't
Speaker 1: start to get wrist watches with that kind of capacity
Speaker 1: until the late eighties at the very earliest. And of
Speaker 1: course we you know, we've talked all about smart watches
Speaker 1: in previous episodes, including the most famous one, the Dick
Speaker 1: Tracy wrist radio, and there have been lots of people
Speaker 1: who have created various kinds of of watches that were
Speaker 1: also communicators. But now we're finally getting into the era
Speaker 1: where they aren't super bulky or have you know, no
Speaker 1: battery life whatsoever. So definitely a little ahead of its
Speaker 1: time there, but supposed to be. Moving on to the next.
Speaker 1: Roger Moore film, nineteen eight three's Octopusy, which I saw
Speaker 1: in a drive in movie theater. I remember distinctly going
Speaker 1: to see this movie and thinking, even as a kid,
Speaker 1: in three same year that Return of the Jedi came out,
Speaker 1: even as a kid, thinking this is silly. It's this
Speaker 1: I would I would argue that Octopusy is these silliest
Speaker 1: of the James Bond. But it certainly had some of
Speaker 1: the silliest examples of technology and and uh camouflage, with
Speaker 1: the possible exception of a car that we'll talk about
Speaker 1: towards the end of this episode. But for one thing,
Speaker 1: they had the wristwatch and pen combo that this part
Speaker 1: wasn't so silly. The idea was that the pen had
Speaker 1: surveillance technology like a microphone in it that you would
Speaker 1: surreptitiously leave someplace and then you could pick up the
Speaker 1: transmission on the wristwatch and listen in on what was
Speaker 1: going on. Not that crazy an idea actually, so I
Speaker 1: kind of get that one. Also, the pen had some
Speaker 1: nitric and hydrochloric acid in it that could clearly dissolve stuff,
Speaker 1: because occasionally you have to dissolve a bad guy's face,
Speaker 1: you know, and you might have the ark of the
Speaker 1: Covenant in your use. Uh. So, then there was a
Speaker 1: weapon that one of the nameless henchman in this movie used.
Speaker 1: There was a buzz saw slash yo yo type thing. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it was I don't think that was intended
Speaker 1: to be a yo yo. I think it was purely
Speaker 1: for for weapon purposes. I don't think that the bad
Speaker 1: guy was trying to trick anyone with it. It wasn't
Speaker 1: trying to walk the dog or it wasn't. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was a buzz saw that had yo yo functionality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the they thought ahead a little bit. So the
Speaker 1: there was like a handpiece this guy wore where he
Speaker 1: could hold the blade like a saw blade, you know,
Speaker 1: and like a saw blade that's on a cable. But uh,
Speaker 1: and he was the guy who was using it was
Speaker 1: mostly using it from above. He was on a level
Speaker 1: higher up than where James Bond was. He could kind
Speaker 1: of throw it down and have it come back into
Speaker 1: your hand right and it would spin on the end
Speaker 1: of its ropes, sort of like a yo yo would
Speaker 1: if you if you did not sleep. I just you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's called sleeping. But it could cut through like
Speaker 1: all this stuff, Like it cuts through a table that's
Speaker 1: got like a big fruit plate on it, because you
Speaker 1: know that's visually interesting. Um. And truth is, unless there
Speaker 1: was a motor that was turning that saw blade, that
Speaker 1: just wouldn't work because as soon as it made contact
Speaker 1: with something solid, it would start to lose velocity, so
Speaker 1: it might it might embed in something. Sure, you could
Speaker 1: probably get it to injure a person. Pretty sure, Pretty well, sure.
Speaker 1: I just wouldn't continue to cut. It wouldn't continue to
Speaker 1: rotate and cut, so that's not realistic. In fact, a
Speaker 1: larger version of this sort of thing was used in
Speaker 1: a later James Bond film, but on an industrial level,
Speaker 1: where it was supposed to be something meant to cut
Speaker 1: down trees and ends up cutting James Bond's car in half. Unlikely. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: something that was more likely was a TV watch. Um,
Speaker 1: but Bond had a had a color TV display embedded
Speaker 1: in a in a wrist watch. Um, have you seen
Speaker 1: any pictures of this thing? I'll tell you what. All
Speaker 1: the pictures online of this thing. The still image that
Speaker 1: they picked, which which one woman's cleavage shocking. I'm shocked,
Speaker 1: every single one. By the way, if you're going out
Speaker 1: there rushing to look at Google image starch right now
Speaker 1: after I said that for shame. But I was just
Speaker 1: it was one of those things where I was looking
Speaker 1: at pictures of these different gadgets because some of them
Speaker 1: I was unfamiliar with. I haven't seen all the Bond films,
Speaker 1: so I was like, I need to see a picture
Speaker 1: of or perhaps it's been a while in many cases,
Speaker 1: right right, And then like, I have no memory of
Speaker 1: this TV watch even though I remember watching Octopussy and uh,
Speaker 1: and so I looked it up and was like, oh, really,
Speaker 1: at Saco had actually come out with a two color
Speaker 1: TV watch the previous year, so so that was totally legit. Almost. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a little bit smaller than what you would
Speaker 1: expect in it had a little bit color, the color
Speaker 1: was better, but but it was still online with the
Speaker 1: sort of stuff that was coming out, you know, and
Speaker 1: you expect that whatever James Bond has is bleeding edge technology. Yes,
Speaker 1: other bleeding edge technology. And my two favorite from this film,
Speaker 1: which are probably my two favorite of any James Bond
Speaker 1: film ever in terms of pure ridiculous factor. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: got We've got the fake horse. Yeah, there's a horse
Speaker 1: trailer with a fake horse, and the back end of
Speaker 1: the fake horse lifts up and James Bond pulls out
Speaker 1: a miniature aircraft that was hidden inside the horse and
Speaker 1: horse trailer. So you've got this camouflaged trailer like it
Speaker 1: could have just been a trailer. Why did it to
Speaker 1: be a horse trailer with a fake horse and at
Speaker 1: that's hiding a gyrocopter. That is a question for the ages, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: I'm not answer. I would say that this is the
Speaker 1: dumbest thing that happens in Octopus E except for one
Speaker 1: other thing, except for the fact that there's a crocodile
Speaker 1: shaped motor boat. Yeah, there's a crocodile shaped It's it's
Speaker 1: incredible to me that that multiple people in a movie
Speaker 1: studio said this is a great plan. Let us enact it.
Speaker 1: This is a and this continues to be terrific, let
Speaker 1: us go ahead with it. Not that's not only that,
Speaker 1: but someone paid for that crocodile shaped motor boat. Prop
Speaker 1: paid a lot. There might have been multiple ones that
Speaker 1: they had to decide which one of these is the
Speaker 1: best crocodile shaped boat prop. Oh Man, So let's move on.
Speaker 1: Things do improve in a way. We we get never
Speaker 1: say Never again in with a Return of Sean Connery. Now,
Speaker 1: this was a film that was not made by the
Speaker 1: same studio that was making all the other James Bond films.
Speaker 1: So some people don't include it, some people do. We're
Speaker 1: including it because why not. It's actually kind of a
Speaker 1: based on the same story as a Thunderball was. So
Speaker 1: if you remember in our last episode, Connery was in
Speaker 1: Thunderball too, So essentially he's he's making two remake of
Speaker 1: his own movie in a way. So in this one,
Speaker 1: he had a pen that had an explosive charge in
Speaker 1: it that was meant to fire a projectile, which you
Speaker 1: could do, and we talked about the lipstick and cigarette
Speaker 1: one shot pistols in the past. Obviously you couldn't make
Speaker 1: it be a pen pen like. It couldn't be made
Speaker 1: out of the same stuff as your regular pen, because
Speaker 1: that wouldn't hold up under the stress of your hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be bad. That's what we call a bad result.
Speaker 1: But technically it is possible. H And another, I thought
Speaker 1: I'd pull up another kind of funky spy gun. I
Speaker 1: like to bring up real life examples whenever we talk
Speaker 1: about these fictional ones. There actually was this cell phone,
Speaker 1: um that what looks like it dates from the early nineties.
Speaker 1: It is a big, clunky, candy bar style cell phone,
Speaker 1: all right, But if you were to uh to bisect
Speaker 1: it so the top half comes away from the bottom half,
Speaker 1: you would see that there are four bullets that can
Speaker 1: be in this thing, and it can actually fire bullets.
Speaker 1: When you put in a four digit code in the
Speaker 1: cell phone, it fires off a bullet. Yeah. So, um,
Speaker 1: one of these was actually found in the wild. I
Speaker 1: want to say it was in the UK. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of a kind of crazy that these things actually
Speaker 1: do exist to some extent, although I doubt that they are,
Speaker 1: you know, in wide use. It's probably one of those
Speaker 1: things that you know, when all else fails, that's something
Speaker 1: that you might rely upon that may or may not
Speaker 1: get you out of a tricky situation, unless you're James Bond,
Speaker 1: in which case it always does right because it's because
Speaker 1: it's a plot gadget. Yeah. Um uh. That film also
Speaker 1: had I think the first example of a watch with
Speaker 1: a laser beam cutting tool, yeah, which again not realistic
Speaker 1: because you would need a lot of power to be
Speaker 1: able to create a laser of significant intensity for you
Speaker 1: to cut through anything. Now, we could have laser pointers
Speaker 1: Shara watches, in fact, I'm sure there's some watches out
Speaker 1: there that do. But for something that could actually cut
Speaker 1: you would need a pretty significant power and that's not
Speaker 1: something that you could fit in a wrist watch form
Speaker 1: factor moving on too of you to a kill. We'll
Speaker 1: guess who's back with us, Roger Moore. So here's an
Speaker 1: interesting piece of technology that that you found an example of,
Speaker 1: at least a concept that's similar to it. One of
Speaker 1: the things James Bond has is a ring that hides
Speaker 1: a camera in it. Now, this is also, especially in
Speaker 1: five when you're talking about film cameras, really hard to
Speaker 1: do because how do you how do you miniaturize all
Speaker 1: that stuff so it fits into a ring? Um. But
Speaker 1: on top of that, you know, now even with a
Speaker 1: digital one, it would still be tricky because again you
Speaker 1: have to worry about power, like where does the power
Speaker 1: come from? Right, news broken late that a design studio
Speaker 1: is working on a digital camera and in a ring
Speaker 1: thing like this. They're they're calling it the camera ing. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but it as of right now, I haven't heard any
Speaker 1: further development about everything I looked into. Look like it
Speaker 1: was a concept, not even beyond a concept at this point,
Speaker 1: so we may never see a real one. Now, the
Speaker 1: pictures of the concept drawings make it look super cool
Speaker 1: and I totally want one. Yeah, And in fact, lots
Speaker 1: of people on on like Pinterest and fancy in places
Speaker 1: like that have been like this. This thing is terrific. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's now the drawing is terrific. It's amazing
Speaker 1: what people can draw, isn't it? If only that thing
Speaker 1: can come real again, I don't know how you get
Speaker 1: around the power thing. You geld to have a small
Speaker 1: battery in it, but it would drain that pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: I would imagine. Anyway. They also had an electric shaver
Speaker 1: that was actually hiding eavesdropping technology, which again uh and um.
Speaker 1: And then that that iceberg boat submarine. It all depends
Speaker 1: on who you ask. Whether as a boat or a
Speaker 1: submarine that's disguised as an iceberg, it's better than a crocodile. However,
Speaker 1: this particular iceberg boat also, as I recall, had a
Speaker 1: bed in it, and she pain I. I that, you know,
Speaker 1: iceberg shaped sub mercibles is where I keep all of
Speaker 1: my luxury items. So I'm not sure why you're questioning this.
Speaker 1: This is one of those issues that I have with
Speaker 1: James Bond. Is just not only that he's a spy
Speaker 1: that draws unwanted attention to himself wherever he goes, but
Speaker 1: he's also like living this insane lavish lifestyle that that
Speaker 1: nobody does except for maybe Elon Musk. Maybe that's why
Speaker 1: he bought that's submercibiles. He's trying to become James Bond. Um.
Speaker 1: You know. Anyway, I just thought it was weird. So
Speaker 1: now we're moving on to the Living Daylights, where we
Speaker 1: get a brand new Bond. Timothy Dalton, Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: Timothy Dalton was not one of the more lauded James Bonds.
Speaker 1: Less than popular at least I think Roger Moore people
Speaker 1: have a kind of fondness or campiness. Timothy Dawnon. Well,
Speaker 1: for it's not entirely his fault that Timothy Dalton movies
Speaker 1: were a little dour. You know, they weren't. There were.
Speaker 1: It seemed like a lot of fun missing from some
Speaker 1: of those Timothy Dalton and they they were, they were
Speaker 1: a little bit humorless. I so the Living Daylights, let's
Speaker 1: talk about some of the gadgets in that. Yeah, let's see.
Speaker 1: We had a a key chain that included knockout gas
Speaker 1: to be released if you whistled the correct notes, which
Speaker 1: was rule Britannia for James Bond. Presumably each double O
Speaker 1: agent would have a different whistle que so rule Britanny.
Speaker 1: So do do do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do
Speaker 1: would release knockout gas, but it also could explode if
Speaker 1: used a different kind of whistle. For for for James,
Speaker 1: they used a wolf whistle, which Q of course comments
Speaker 1: upon as you would expect, and it was totally appropriate
Speaker 1: for Mr misogyny James Bond. Also contained inside this key
Speaker 1: chain was a lock pick capable of opening up like
Speaker 1: n of the world's locks, according to Q, which is amazing. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that any keychain could contain all of
Speaker 1: these things and still be a key chain and not
Speaker 1: like a kit. It seems unlikely. Yeah, that that's again
Speaker 1: one of those physics issues. How do you pack? How
Speaker 1: do you make enough room for enough knockout gas to
Speaker 1: be effective for anything, or enough explosive charge to be dangerous,
Speaker 1: and have the enough room for the lock picks as well?
Speaker 1: All three of those things into something that tiny would
Speaker 1: be really hard to do. Also, how can you make
Speaker 1: sure that when one goes off, like when the gas
Speaker 1: is released, it doesn't accidentally also make it explode. Because
Speaker 1: knockout gas is great if you don't want to hurt people,
Speaker 1: but if you do knock out gas and then immediately
Speaker 1: the key chain explodes. Yeah that's not good. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: would assume that whatever release mechanism would would be I
Speaker 1: don't know, yeah, at any rate. Um. Then then there
Speaker 1: was a boom box, Yes, the Ghetto Blast. As Q
Speaker 1: would say, it was meant for agents who are operating
Speaker 1: in the United States because, as we all know, by
Speaker 1: seven we all were walking around with four foot long
Speaker 1: radios perched on our shoulders. Well, it's the only thing
Speaker 1: that matched with our pants were until we were mostly
Speaker 1: looking for for sheets of cardboard upon which we would
Speaker 1: bust some moves. I would encourage you to watch the
Speaker 1: documentary Break into Electric Boogaloo to learn more. So anyway,
Speaker 1: the Ghetto Blaster was a rocket launcher that was disguised
Speaker 1: to be a boom box. The heaviest boombox eff you
Speaker 1: would imagine for it to be an effective rocket launcher,
Speaker 1: it would probably be pretty weighty. To be fair, boom
Speaker 1: boxes were already pretty heavy back in those days, but
Speaker 1: this would be even heavier. However, Dalton Is Bond did
Speaker 1: get a new Aston Martin, Yes, the V eight Vantage Volante,
Speaker 1: which had hug cap lasers, retractable ski retractable spikes, also
Speaker 1: a missile launcher and a rocket that would make it go.
Speaker 1: As I put in the notes, Wicked Fast also had
Speaker 1: a self destruct system, which most of the aston Martin's
Speaker 1: actual this point did too. That's one of those things
Speaker 1: come standard self destruction, you know. Not the bond ever
Speaker 1: needed the self destruct system. Yeah. No, he was usually
Speaker 1: pretty good at wrecking those all on his own, to
Speaker 1: be fair. To be fair, I think one of his
Speaker 1: vehicles did did a self destruct when someone tried to
Speaker 1: break into it, and it was part of the anti
Speaker 1: theft device. It's a very effective one. Just a car alarm. No,
Speaker 1: that's great. That's much less annoying than alarm because it's
Speaker 1: over in a moment. It doesn't go on all morning long.
Speaker 1: Moving on to our next film, License to Kill From
Speaker 1: I remember this one too. Uh So, this one had
Speaker 1: a plastic explosives in the form of toothpaste called Dentonite. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I had a pack of cigarettes that were used
Speaker 1: as the detonator, So you would squeeze out the plastic
Speaker 1: the plastic and then use the the cigarettes and planted
Speaker 1: in it to be the blasting caps. So I they
Speaker 1: don't actually say what type of plastic explosives they're using.
Speaker 1: I assume it was something similar to PE four, which
Speaker 1: is what the Brits use. In the US, we use
Speaker 1: something very similar called C four. I say we, I
Speaker 1: just mean the the entities that have access to these
Speaker 1: things personally, I don't use either. They don't give you
Speaker 1: four not anymore. So, um, yeah, these things require blasting caps.
Speaker 1: They actually can withstand impact pretty well. They can they
Speaker 1: can withstand heat pretty well, unless it's super intense explosive
Speaker 1: heat that releases very quickly, which is why you need
Speaker 1: the blasting caps. So um, it's another one of those
Speaker 1: things where you'd have to have a very effective blasting
Speaker 1: cap technology to make this plastic explosive stuff ignite and
Speaker 1: and explode. So it's not like it's impossible, it would
Speaker 1: just be really tricky to do in that particular form factor.
Speaker 1: And then we had a few We had some camera
Speaker 1: technology in this one. Um that there was some kind
Speaker 1: of weird sniper camera gun thing, a sniper rifle disguised
Speaker 1: as a camera. But it's like a Decepticon. Yeah, uh
Speaker 1: snipers and guys. Yes, Um, we also had it. We
Speaker 1: also had a Polaroid camera that had definitely lasers. Well,
Speaker 1: the lasers were meant to somehow create an X ray
Speaker 1: version of whatever it was you were taking a picture of.
Speaker 1: So if I had this polaroid and you were wearing
Speaker 1: a trench coat and you were laden down with various weaponry, which, guys,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, Lauren holds her weapons all in
Speaker 1: the open, so it's not like she would be concealing
Speaker 1: them because she doesn't feel the need to do that.
Speaker 1: But if she did, I prefer that the nine ft
Speaker 1: long anime sword right personally, right, it's it's it's very
Speaker 1: comical to watch Lauren keep on bumping into door frames.
Speaker 1: But no, let's say that I wanted to check out
Speaker 1: and see if Lauren was in fact carrying, you know,
Speaker 1: an arsenal underneath that trench coat. Take a photo of
Speaker 1: this polaroid and it had this little red laser flash
Speaker 1: that came out of the flash instead of a regular
Speaker 1: camera flash, and the polaroid would come out with the
Speaker 1: X ray version of whatever that picture is. Um again,
Speaker 1: not really a thing. Uh, you know, using X rays
Speaker 1: would be dangerous. Using that camera would be really dangerous
Speaker 1: on any extended So the lasers would be deadly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just it would just mean that you would be
Speaker 1: deadly in the sense that you would eventually probably contract
Speaker 1: contract cancer as opposed to get burned by a laser.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it wasn't meant to be a weapon. It
Speaker 1: was meant to try and detect, you know, people smuggling
Speaker 1: and guns into places where you don't want them to
Speaker 1: have them. We'll be back with more about spy technology
Speaker 1: after this quick break. Okay, In our last James Bond film,
Speaker 1: we had Timothy Dalton, but now on our next one
Speaker 1: we go up to the next actor to play James Bond. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be a six year break in between these
Speaker 1: movies and the next film that came out was Golden
Speaker 1: with Pierce Brosnan. Now Pierce Brosnan a lot of people
Speaker 1: felt was a good, um refreshing breath after Timothy Dalton. Again,
Speaker 1: I think the Timothy Dalton movies was that was more
Speaker 1: of a scripting issue than necessarily a casting one. But
Speaker 1: Pierce brosn and definitely brought in some uh uh you know,
Speaker 1: kind of an edge to the character that had sort
Speaker 1: of not been there before. It would definitely be refined
Speaker 1: later on. So Golden nye h. Besides being one of
Speaker 1: the best Nintendo sixty four video games ever made. I'm
Speaker 1: glad that you said that, because that was going to
Speaker 1: be my really important note about this was also a
Speaker 1: great movie. Uh, he had his Aston Martin d B
Speaker 1: five again, so we're back to the Aston Martin. This
Speaker 1: one in particular, had a fax machine in the dashboard,
Speaker 1: just like any sexy, suave spy, let me fax this, um,
Speaker 1: but but more and more interestingly, cellular voice communication capacity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is when we're starting to see cell phones start
Speaker 1: to get adopted in large numbers. But you know, to
Speaker 1: have like a hands free cellular voice command system inside
Speaker 1: of a car was definitely bleeding edge tech at the time.
Speaker 1: They also had that's actually one of my favorite scenes
Speaker 1: in Gold and I. There's a ballpoint pen that Q
Speaker 1: gives to to Bond, and the pen is an actual
Speaker 1: explosive device, a grenade that had that you activate by
Speaker 1: clicking it three times, since it's a ballpoint, so if
Speaker 1: you click it three times, it activates and has a
Speaker 1: four second long fuse, and you can deactivate it by
Speaker 1: clicking it three more times. So Q says, you know,
Speaker 1: you click it three times, click, click, click, and the
Speaker 1: four second fuse starts and goes click click click, and
Speaker 1: then James Bond takes and says, how long did you
Speaker 1: say the fuse was? Click click click, and then Q
Speaker 1: just looks at him, takes the pen back, calmly, clicks
Speaker 1: it three times and says, grow up, double O seven.
Speaker 1: And then of course there's a little line about so
Speaker 1: they always said the pen is mightier than the swords
Speaker 1: as well, this time they're right because of me, says Q.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of other silly gadgets shown
Speaker 1: in the background during the Q laboratory scene, like some
Speaker 1: of the silliest ones and uh, you had like an
Speaker 1: ejector seats shown off. There was the uh there was
Speaker 1: one point where Q shows up. Actually, when Q first
Speaker 1: shows up in the scene, he's we wheeling out in
Speaker 1: the wheelchair and he's got one leg in a big
Speaker 1: plaster cast and Bond says, home, I'm sorry about your leg,
Speaker 1: and then Q demonstrates that it's actually a missile launcher,
Speaker 1: and a missile launches from the cast leg and flies
Speaker 1: about twenty feet to the right of a dummy that
Speaker 1: he was pointing toward, and then Q just casually stands
Speaker 1: up out of the wheelchair and you see that was
Speaker 1: a false leg the whole time. Uh. And we had
Speaker 1: a request by Ian on Facebook that said that we
Speaker 1: needed to explain that, if not for the practicality, but
Speaker 1: for the sheer comedic value of that particular device. There's
Speaker 1: also one that they don't comment on, Like you were
Speaker 1: saying earlier, Lauren, there occasionally in these Q segments you
Speaker 1: just see stuff going on in the background hilarious, but
Speaker 1: no one says anything. There's one point where you see
Speaker 1: a guy, a guy in a lapka walk into a
Speaker 1: phone booth and then only the phone booth just fills
Speaker 1: up with a big inflated balloon, trapping the guy against
Speaker 1: the door, and because the door pulls in on phone booth,
Speaker 1: he can't get out, and you just see him squished
Speaker 1: up against the glass, and that is hilarious. Also doesn't
Speaker 1: play any other part in the movie whatsoever. Uh. That
Speaker 1: starts to feel like it belongs more and get smart
Speaker 1: than on James. Yeah, some of these, some of these
Speaker 1: around this era started to seem like parodies of I
Speaker 1: mean even even more. At least they were being self
Speaker 1: aware because I feel like the stuff that was going
Speaker 1: on in Roger Morris time was straightforwardly like it was
Speaker 1: just It's great. It was just camp the way the
Speaker 1: old Batman series was camp. So we move on to
Speaker 1: tomorrow Never Dies that film again with Pierce Browsnon. Yep.
Speaker 1: They had a mobile phone that could act as a
Speaker 1: fingerprint scanner and as we've all mentioned, yeah, iPhone five
Speaker 1: S does that now, so we actually have technology that
Speaker 1: could do this that you know, we could easily adapt that.
Speaker 1: In fact, I'm sure there are law enforcement agencies that
Speaker 1: have adapted that technology to work in the field. Um.
Speaker 1: It also contained a lock pick in the antenna. It
Speaker 1: was an electronic lock pick, and you could put the
Speaker 1: lock pick in a lock and you press a key
Speaker 1: on the phone it would cause it to pick a
Speaker 1: lock automatically. And it also was um uh twenty volts
Speaker 1: stunned gun, so you could zap people if they wanted
Speaker 1: to run up your minutes. And it could do one
Speaker 1: other thing. It was a remote control. It was a
Speaker 1: remote control for Bonds BMW first of all BMW car. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was a little bit irked by that too. Um.
Speaker 1: But but the part where it was a remote control
Speaker 1: that you know, could could let the car locate Bond
Speaker 1: and drive itself to him is technology that people are
Speaker 1: very much working on right now. Yeah, we've talked about
Speaker 1: autonomous cars in the past. This is truly an autonomous
Speaker 1: car that could you know, it could identify the signal
Speaker 1: where Bond was and then plan out a route and
Speaker 1: drive to him. Obviously going in a straight line would
Speaker 1: not necessary only work if there were say, you know,
Speaker 1: lakes or buildings or something in the way. So it
Speaker 1: actually has to be able to navigate right and and
Speaker 1: as that kind of technology gets better, I we were
Speaker 1: not quite there yet except an extreme prototype phase. But yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, Stephen on Facebook requested that one. So also
Speaker 1: this was you know, we weren't the only ones who
Speaker 1: got a little miffed about the Aston Martin going away
Speaker 1: and the BMW coming in. That ended up being a
Speaker 1: kind of a sticking point for a few people. BMW
Speaker 1: would stick around for a little bit, but uh, don't worry.
Speaker 1: If you guys love your British cars, you'll you'll get
Speaker 1: pay off a little bit later. There was also a
Speaker 1: bad guy who had a wrist band grappling hook, so
Speaker 1: it was something that you could fire from the wrist
Speaker 1: band had a little python or piton if you're British
Speaker 1: that would fly out and embed into something, and it
Speaker 1: had a high tension strength wire connected to it so
Speaker 1: you could swing on it or climb In this case
Speaker 1: it was a character who could uh use it to
Speaker 1: run down a vertical surface. Uh, you know, because that's happened.
Speaker 1: That happened and Bond movies. Um, It's one of those
Speaker 1: things that I questioned the legitimacy of only from the
Speaker 1: sense of we could make a wrist mounted device that
Speaker 1: could fire something, in fact, fire something hard enough to
Speaker 1: to hurt or kill somebody, certainly, but to fire something
Speaker 1: so hard that it embeds in a very tough material
Speaker 1: like stone and his high tensile enough that you could
Speaker 1: furthermore climb up. That's a lot of down as the
Speaker 1: case maybe exactly because I mean, not only does it
Speaker 1: have to be strong enough to to penetrate, right, it
Speaker 1: has to be strong enough to carry the weight of
Speaker 1: the line. Like. That's a lot of that's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff you've got to figure out so that this
Speaker 1: thing will work the way it's supposed to wear. The
Speaker 1: same problem I have with some of Batman's stuff. I
Speaker 1: think that's a different podcast. I think I think we
Speaker 1: should that is a different podcast probably will do something.
Speaker 1: I think that we should call whoever created that and
Speaker 1: be like, so we have the space elevator idea that
Speaker 1: we're trying to work. Yeah, so if you've got enough
Speaker 1: of that wire that apparently is incredibly strong, let's use
Speaker 1: it for something else. Let's talk about that that moves on.
Speaker 1: Who The world is not enough? Which is I recall
Speaker 1: is James Bond's family motto? Was it? Yeah, the world
Speaker 1: is not enough. That's that's the Bond family crest. If
Speaker 1: I'm if I'm not mistaken, I could be. I'm totally
Speaker 1: speaking from memory here. It was made another pierced brass
Speaker 1: and in film, all right, we had yet another wrist
Speaker 1: watch with the grappling hook. And and if they also
Speaker 1: had eyeglasses that incorporate X ray technology, so you could
Speaker 1: look at people and turn on the X rayspects and
Speaker 1: they were X rayspects where you could actually see if
Speaker 1: someone was carrying a gun. I'm sure Bond also used
Speaker 1: it for other purposes. I feel like that's likely. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course, again miniaturization of the technology is an issue.
Speaker 1: And also the whole cancer thing where radiation is radiation, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's ionizing radiation, which means that it's not good
Speaker 1: for us to be around non ionizing that's okay for
Speaker 1: the most part, I think not okay. Yeah, However, there
Speaker 1: are some infrared glasses that exist and can be used
Speaker 1: for for similar nifty stuff. Just this era of vascular
Speaker 1: imaging goggles were released that can help medical professionals like
Speaker 1: locate a vein for for blood samples or etcetera. Pretty awesome,
Speaker 1: Which is pretty awesome. Um and and of course we've
Speaker 1: got photon cameras that can help us see around corners.
Speaker 1: We talked about that in a Forred Thinking episode about
Speaker 1: how it measures the time it takes for light to
Speaker 1: come back around, Like a portion of the light hits
Speaker 1: an open doorway and goes into a room, and some
Speaker 1: of that light gets reflected back, hits the doorway again
Speaker 1: gets reflected back toward the camera, and by measuring the
Speaker 1: the amount of time those individual photons took to go
Speaker 1: out and come back, a camera can actually reconstruct what
Speaker 1: is inside the room next door without having a clear
Speaker 1: line of sight inside it, which is crazy, but it's real.
Speaker 1: It's not X ray glasses. It's never going to be
Speaker 1: X ray glasses. I don't. Yeah, but I saw on
Speaker 1: the back of this comic book is guys holding up
Speaker 1: his hand. He's got this crazy he looked on his
Speaker 1: face looks like Drew Carey. However, things that I think
Speaker 1: are definitely up and coming um bagpipes that can hold
Speaker 1: machine guns and flamethrowers. Look, aren't bagpipes deadly enough already?
Speaker 1: Do we really need to add more killing power to bagpipes?
Speaker 1: It up with q okay or should I say? Ah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That was another one of those things seen in Queues
Speaker 1: lab as, this guy with a set of bagpipes that
Speaker 1: turn into a machine gun in flamethrower, because you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's exactly what we need, are more highlanders with
Speaker 1: high high caliber weapons, all right. They also this was
Speaker 1: also one of those things that when I saw it,
Speaker 1: I was like, this is this is hilarious, And yet
Speaker 1: there's a real world technology that's similar to what was
Speaker 1: shown on the screen. So James Bond's wearing the ski jacket.
Speaker 1: There's this whole chase scene where he's driving what's essentially
Speaker 1: a snowmobile with a parachute and a fan on the
Speaker 1: back of it so that can fly in places, and
Speaker 1: he's being chased by bad guys who are also on
Speaker 1: these things. And then he and a lady are on
Speaker 1: this this icy area where uh and the spot above
Speaker 1: them is breaking apart. It's gonna cause like a little avalanche.
Speaker 1: It's going to crush them in a second. And so
Speaker 1: quickly James Bond grabs the lady and uh the and
Speaker 1: hits something on his jacket which inflates this ball around them.
Speaker 1: So they get surrounded by this big inflatable ball and
Speaker 1: uh and sort of like a zorb, one of those
Speaker 1: big inflat and ones that you could run around inside,
Speaker 1: similar to that yeah, yeah, big inflat hamster ball, and
Speaker 1: that ends up providing shelter when everything falls on top
Speaker 1: of them so that they don't get crushed by the
Speaker 1: snow and ice that falls. Um. And at first, when
Speaker 1: you look at this, you're like, oh, come on, that's
Speaker 1: just so silly. However, it's actually kind of similar. There's this,
Speaker 1: um this cool yeah just announced this year. I think
Speaker 1: there's this inflatable helmet. Yeah, it looks like it's uh,
Speaker 1: this kind of bulky scarf that you would wear. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's the hole ding and it's uh, it's an air
Speaker 1: bag for cyclists and the idea is that it has
Speaker 1: this inflatable helmet that can expand rapidly if it detects
Speaker 1: a sudden change in your acceleration and cover your head
Speaker 1: in this inflatable bag, so that way, if you have
Speaker 1: a crash, your head is protected, even if you're not
Speaker 1: wearing even if you don't want to wear a standard
Speaker 1: So kind of cool, I mean in the sense that
Speaker 1: there is technology that's being developed right now that's similar
Speaker 1: to this, this idea that was proposed in the movie.
Speaker 1: I would think that anything potentially sharp like ice might
Speaker 1: be a bad idea for something like that. Also, the
Speaker 1: material would have to be able to withstand puncture. I
Speaker 1: also think it would it would require a lot of
Speaker 1: pressure on the inside of that that inflatable object to
Speaker 1: withstand the huge amount of weight of an avalanche like
Speaker 1: it would it would need to be mostly rigid right
Speaker 1: when it couldn't be like the bouncy bouncy castle sort
Speaker 1: of thing or just crush you. We've got more to
Speaker 1: say a spy tech, but first let's take another quick break.
Speaker 1: Moving on to Die Another Day film, um, and that
Speaker 1: would be our last one with Pierce Brosnan. Yep. And
Speaker 1: this one, James Bond gets a ring that can emit
Speaker 1: an ultra high frequency single that is powerful enough to
Speaker 1: shutter bulletproof glass. Which okay, so materials have this resonant frequency,
Speaker 1: right that if you match the resonant frequency, it causes
Speaker 1: the material to start to vibrate. And MythBusters did a
Speaker 1: whole thing on this where they showed, you know, the
Speaker 1: whole idea of being able to shatter a a wine
Speaker 1: glass with your voice if you're able to sing at
Speaker 1: the right note, and they showed that at the right
Speaker 1: level of uh, not not just the right frequency, but
Speaker 1: the right volume, the right intensity, you could actually make
Speaker 1: this happen. You could. Then they shot into slow motion
Speaker 1: where you could actually see the glass deforming as it
Speaker 1: was shaking. Is really cool. However, squeezing that amount of
Speaker 1: energy into a ring is going to be difficult. Yeah,
Speaker 1: being able to project that much of volume so that
Speaker 1: you were able to shatter something like a pane of glass,
Speaker 1: because I mean, if you ever watch these videos, glass
Speaker 1: can deform a surprising amount before it breaks, a really weird,
Speaker 1: scary amount. Yeah, when slow motion you look at you like,
Speaker 1: that doesn't even look real, So it would I certainly
Speaker 1: don't think you could pack that kind of wallop in
Speaker 1: a ring. No, I mean you could punch the glass
Speaker 1: of course, of its bulletproof, You're probably just going to
Speaker 1: break your hand. But anyway, the basic concept is sound.
Speaker 1: The execution is questionable, not so much. Yeah, the Aston
Speaker 1: Martin in this one, Um okay, So so we have
Speaker 1: basically we had an invisible car. Yeah, the Aston Martin Vanquish,
Speaker 1: also sometimes called the Aston Martin Vanish. There's a car that,
Speaker 1: according to the film, the idea was that had lots
Speaker 1: of these little tiny cameras all around the car, and
Speaker 1: what would happen is that it would reject it would
Speaker 1: capture whatever's coming on like oncoming and projected onto the
Speaker 1: surface of the car itself. There for doing kind of
Speaker 1: an invisibility cloak sort of. The idea being that if
Speaker 1: if you're looking at the car, you're actually seeing what's
Speaker 1: on the other side of the car as opposed the
Speaker 1: car itself. This worked for everything, not just the not
Speaker 1: just the car's body, but the wheels, the glass, the windows,
Speaker 1: the windshield, everything was was completely cloaked and when it moved,
Speaker 1: it moved like you know, like the clingon Starship and
Speaker 1: star trek right right, um, And okay, so I mean
Speaker 1: researchers and artists have in fact come up with invisibility
Speaker 1: cloaks that work on similar principles, but not at Aston
Speaker 1: Martin road speeds really and and to be fair to
Speaker 1: James Bond, at first, when you see this, the car
Speaker 1: is not moving, it's still. But then it does start
Speaker 1: to move and it's moving perfectly fine, like you see
Speaker 1: the shimmer as it moves. But it's not like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not like not like, it's not like the stuff
Speaker 1: on the car is lagging behind three seconds from what
Speaker 1: is actually around it, all right, right, um, right now.
Speaker 1: The best technology for this kind of thing is on
Speaker 1: the micrometer scale, you know, carbon nanotube stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And also a lot of the stuff we think of
Speaker 1: as invisibility cloaks right now is really for bands of
Speaker 1: light that we personally cannot see. It's just that from
Speaker 1: a laboratory standpoint, certain types of light will pass through
Speaker 1: as opposed to reflecting off. It's just not in the
Speaker 1: visible spectrum. What do you yeah? And and that was
Speaker 1: a request from a couple of people on Facebook, Richard
Speaker 1: and Monty. Now it also of course had your standard
Speaker 1: James Bond equipment objector seat, which in this film, James
Speaker 1: Bond uses to flip the car from being upside down
Speaker 1: on its hood back to being right side up. The
Speaker 1: objector seat provides the flippy flip. Yeah. Yeah, MythBusters tested
Speaker 1: part of that as part of that that episode that
Speaker 1: they did about and missed that part. I totally forgot
Speaker 1: that part of the You know, I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever seen Die another Day. I've seen the clips, right,
Speaker 1: I've seen the clips of this particular scene because and
Speaker 1: I just remember yelling, oh, come on, and then I
Speaker 1: had the standard you know, machine gun torpedoes right right, yeah,
Speaker 1: all that stuff that you know James Bond has he
Speaker 1: can't leave home without. So moving on, we've got uh, well,
Speaker 1: you got the boring Bond right Casino Royale with this
Speaker 1: Daniel Craig person. This this was a two thousand six films.
Speaker 1: He's dreamy, I can't lie. So yeah, there's a new
Speaker 1: West and Martin in this one, the dbs V twelve.
Speaker 1: She also had a whole bunch of high tech, uh
Speaker 1: first aid gear that was all stored in the glove compartment.
Speaker 1: So nothing like super Crazy in this one. And a
Speaker 1: lot of this was the idea of going back to
Speaker 1: James Bond and kind of grounding the character a little
Speaker 1: bit more, making a little more gritty. Yeah. I I
Speaker 1: liked this entire recent reboot with with Daniel Craig. I
Speaker 1: thought it was a little bit it's a little bit
Speaker 1: over odd at times, but that's okay. But and they
Speaker 1: still have cutting edge technology and in some cases cutting
Speaker 1: edge technology that outstrips what we can currently do. But
Speaker 1: that's not it's not so much a as goofy, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's not as usually right right. Um. One of
Speaker 1: the other bits of tech from this movie was an
Speaker 1: implanted microchip that could act as both a homing device
Speaker 1: and a like a like a biometric monitor um which
Speaker 1: also could send that info back out to m I
Speaker 1: six Yeah, which again is a little a little tricky,
Speaker 1: like how do you create a transmitter with the size
Speaker 1: of a pencil racer that can also transmit this stuff.
Speaker 1: Not that there aren't, you know, implantable technologies that that
Speaker 1: are totally dissimilar to this. We do have things that
Speaker 1: are similar, but they work on very very short range.
Speaker 1: The idea is that's when you can actually monitor the
Speaker 1: patient in person, as opposed to when when you can
Speaker 1: kind of poke a instrument correctly at there are rather
Speaker 1: than rather than you know, miles away. Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: also a touch screen table in m I six, which
Speaker 1: you know, Microsoft had something like as of two thous
Speaker 1: an eight. Yeah, the Surface table. The you know before
Speaker 1: there was the Surface tablet. Dear friends, there was the
Speaker 1: Microsoft Surface table, which is when when they called the
Speaker 1: tablet Microsoft Surface again. That was also when I threw
Speaker 1: my hands up in the air and said, oh, come on,
Speaker 1: I don't do it just to James Bond. I also
Speaker 1: do it to Microsoft. What I said, you already have
Speaker 1: a product called the Surface and it's a table. It's confusing.
Speaker 1: It's fun for me to write about this. You're making
Speaker 1: my articles not be relevant anymore. You got to you
Speaker 1: got to play with one of those one of those. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: they had one where they was on it was on
Speaker 1: display that back then Microsoft had a presence at c Yes,
Speaker 1: they used to have a jungle booth and they had
Speaker 1: the Microsoft Surface there and you could play with it.
Speaker 1: In fact, there were a couple of different booths that
Speaker 1: had a Microsoft Surface. I think um oh it was
Speaker 1: like Intel or something else also had one so the
Speaker 1: neat thing about the surface was had the multi touch capability,
Speaker 1: and this was before you saw that in everything, right,
Speaker 1: So it was one of those um implementations that was
Speaker 1: really cool. So this this was kind of predicting that
Speaker 1: as well. Moving on to Quantum of Solace, Craig's second
Speaker 1: film that came out in two thousand eight. Uh So,
Speaker 1: and again we have another magical telephone in a way,
Speaker 1: so this one could create a composite photo of a
Speaker 1: subject even if Bond only got like a profile shot.
Speaker 1: So if you got a shot from the side of someone,
Speaker 1: this phone could reconstruct that person's entire face, including the
Speaker 1: side that was not facing the camera. And this this
Speaker 1: is one of my personal pet peeves. And and it's
Speaker 1: that whole zoom and enhanced concept where I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: if the camera hasn't recorded that information, it cannot give you.
Speaker 1: The best we can do is assume that you have
Speaker 1: an incredibly symmetrical face. And therefore, if like James Bond,
Speaker 1: encounters you know, mostly supermodels, then in that universe it's
Speaker 1: actually very effective. To be fair, Lauren, James Bond does encountermodels.
Speaker 1: This is what I'm saying, you know, that's that's okay.
Speaker 1: Never never mind where if James Bond took a picture
Speaker 1: of me and profile, however, it would you'd be like, Wow,
Speaker 1: who's that devastatingly handsome gentleman? And then you see me
Speaker 1: and like that cannot be the guy that's in this
Speaker 1: picture because that guy's nose is all crooked and stuff.
Speaker 1: I had a tough childhood. Um yeah, anyway, it was.
Speaker 1: It's not that this technology is totally beyond us, but
Speaker 1: it is one of those things where I don't I
Speaker 1: would highly suspect the reliability of any picture that is
Speaker 1: completely created from just a portion of someone's face. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: we have seen interesting scanning technology with people using something
Speaker 1: like the Connect where they do a very slow turn
Speaker 1: and it gives a full three D scan of a
Speaker 1: person's head. But in that case, you're talking about the
Speaker 1: device that's actually getting data from all points, right, it's
Speaker 1: not just one side all right. Then when it comes
Speaker 1: up to Skyfall, the as of right now, most recent
Speaker 1: film in the James Bond franchise that came out in
Speaker 1: and also starred Mr Craig, Mr Dreamy Craig and um
Speaker 1: and and this this film was very much as sing
Speaker 1: that kind of stripped down esthetic versus especially some of
Speaker 1: the earlier goofy or nineteen eighties films. Um uh and
Speaker 1: and so they kind of make a bit out of
Speaker 1: it when when bonding the new queue made up for
Speaker 1: the first time, umu Q gives him this little box
Speaker 1: and all it contains is a Walter p p K
Speaker 1: and and and a little radio transmitter and and bonds
Speaker 1: like that's it, like like not exactly Christmas, is it? However,
Speaker 1: his his gun does have a a scanner on the handle,
Speaker 1: so it only bond can fire it, all right, right,
Speaker 1: it's a little pomp print reader thing, yeah, which which
Speaker 1: which is technically possible, although it would be harder um
Speaker 1: on a on a mechanical device than it would have
Speaker 1: been on on a digital So if you have some
Speaker 1: sort of digital safety, digitize the safety or something. If
Speaker 1: you if you make the safety completely separate from a
Speaker 1: mechanical approach and you make it an electronic approach, I
Speaker 1: could see that like if it's it's a gay aged
Speaker 1: unless the quote unquote right person is holding the gun, um,
Speaker 1: that would That's the only way I could imagine that
Speaker 1: making sense. I'll give that one to cue um and it.
Speaker 1: Also we also see a return of the Aston Martin
Speaker 1: dB five um, like the like the super classic one
Speaker 1: with all of the super classic stuff pretty much from Goldfinger,
Speaker 1: which you know, to be fair, Skyfall had a lot
Speaker 1: of little nods to some of the earlier Bond films,
Speaker 1: like you you would actually you know, see examples of
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that appeared in earlier Bond films
Speaker 1: just kind of uh, surreptitiously hidden in the in the scene,
Speaker 1: not something that was you know, paraded out in front
Speaker 1: of you, but that That's one of those cool things
Speaker 1: is seeing them pay homage to this rich past that
Speaker 1: James Bond has accumulated, even as they go forward and
Speaker 1: potentially go back and and recreate some of these older stories.
Speaker 1: So it's possible that we'll see some of these older
Speaker 1: stories reimagined in new form um. Some of them may
Speaker 1: just be completely written, you know, from scratch. Some of
Speaker 1: the James Bond films are not based off of any
Speaker 1: Fleming novel. But maybe some of the future ones will
Speaker 1: be just reimagined versions of that. Yeah, and I'm really
Speaker 1: curious to see how I mean, as we keep saying,
Speaker 1: as we have been saying throughout these two episodes. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of this stuff that was crazy
Speaker 1: revolutionary sci fi tech in the nineteen sixties is stuff
Speaker 1: that's on our smartphones today. That wraps up this classic
Speaker 1: episode of tech Stuff. Hope you enjoyed it. If you
Speaker 1: have suggestions for future topics of tech stuff, whether they
Speaker 1: are classic or otherwise, let me know. Send me a
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