“Reception on the dashboard, here [showing Bond a radar]. Audio-visual. Range a hundred and fifty miles.” - Q (Goldfinger, 1964)

Above: James Bond’s car radar* and the now ubiquitous GPS

I remember watching the James Bond Goldfinger where Q was explaining some of the more advanced features of his modified Aston Martin for James - A radar tracking device. Wow. Quips James, “ingenious, and useful too. Allow a man to stop off for a quick one en-route.”

How far we’ve come that the gadgets that we take for granted today far surpass those of the early super-spy (well ok, so I’m still waiting for my ejector seat). The radar tracking device from Goldfinger looks incredibly archaic compared to today’s satellite navigation and GPS systems.

*Sorry, I couldn’t find a screenshot.

Change of Times

Above: Hiding a short, encoded message inside of a coin [left] and hiding multiple DVDs of data in the same coin [right]

Another interesting spy gadget, this time used by real sleuths in the 1950’s, was secret messages hidden in hollow nickel coins. Now the concept seems almost trivial with the size of MicroSD cards these days. Indeed, someone has produced an updated version of the classic hidden message coins, which allows you to carry gigabytes worth of data in loose change.

So now you too can smuggle classified Soviet data through secruity checkpoints!

Smart Phone

Operator: “What number are you calling?”
Smart: “I’m calling Control, Operator…”
Operator: “You have dialed incorrectly. Give me your name and address and your dime will be refunded.”
Smart: “Operator, I’m calling from my shoe!”
Operator: “What is the number of your shoe?”
Smart: “It’s an unlisted shoe, Operator!”

Above: Maxwell Smart trying to reach Control on his ShoePhone and its evolution into the modern mobile phone

And of course, Maxwell Smart single-footedly invented the mobile phone. His telephone, cleverly disguised into a shoe was surely the inspiration of the Nokias of the world. So let us all pay homage to the totally iconic ShoePhone! I reckon you could probably make one of these - though the abuse the phone would take being stomped on all the time could be a problem… (on second thoughts, probably about as much as a drunken night on the town).

In a Blue Moon

Funny how so much of the technology predictions of the past were based around transportation—flying cars, tube-based transport, jet-packs, space colonies—yet it is one area that has been stagnant by comparison. We are still being propelled along by the internal combustion engine and have yet to reach space cheaply (though we’re close).

Above: The Apollo Lunar capsule [top] and Verne’s manned projectile to the Moon [bottom]

An exception from the past is prehaps Jules Verne and his remarkably accurate predictions about getting to the moon, in 1856. He predicted details like the size, weight and velocity of a capsule required to reach the moon over 100 years before the first US Apollo missions and before modern rocketry. Pretty amazing.

I wonder if the internet as we know it will be passe in 50 years?

Ah money, the necessary evil.

I watched Zeitgeist: Addendum recently, a documentary about the monetary establishment and its amazingly overt power over the world. I highly recommend watching this documentary—scoff at some of the conjectures by all means but try to keep an open mind. You can watch it here (or grab the torrent).

Of course, it is always good to have a healthy dose of scepticism. What I like to do with a film like this (such as Michael Moore films or An Inconvenient Truth) is sit there and try to absorb it all first, no matter how far fetched the ideas presented might be. And then do a double take. If you’re constantly thinking ‘naa, that’s bullshit’ in your mind all the way through, you can never hope to expand your horizon. Like one of those annoying people in a conversation who continuously interrupt to pull you up on pedantic little points without actually listening to the overall train of thought.

And now for the (hypocritical) pedantic points…

Firstly, something that most conspiracy theorists get wrong is that they assume the powers-that-be are smart, organised and incapable of misjudgment. To err is human. Surely chaos dictates that not everything is contrived. Can war be a by-product of personal rivalry or rash, hot-headed decisions?

One of the interesting and controversial topics near the end of the film was about addressing the problems that arise by being enslaved by a monetary system. In a nutshell these amount to poverty, debt, wage-slave, inequality, war, crime and plundering of natural resources.

The Venus Project proposes an alternative to the monetary system, which is built on the foundations of sustainability and sharing of resources.

While I very much like with the premise of The Venus Project, it feels a little too optimistic. They argue that since scarcity is the inherent property that drives profit—the root of capitalism—and creates the problems stemming from inequality; abundance should alleviate them. That is, if we have the tools to create an abundance of basic necessities for all humans then we would no longer have the desire to steal, fight or exhibit corrupt behaviour—all products of a system geared towards selfish gain. That the ultimate goal is not material possessions gained through sacrifice, but establishments of bonds, connections—to kin, to the natural world.

They don’t factor in a key issue, that people are fallible. Stupid, selfish and fearful. Connectedness and symbiosis are philosophical concepts that goes over most people’s heads. Sure we recognise the drive to love thy neighbour, but how do you get the majority to overcome self-serving motives and laziness and all the dark emotions lurking unvoiced behind wary eyes? Even without money, some will continue to have more status and better women than the rest of us. Inequality is inherent in all systems and hence trade.

On the one hand, the technology to automate our lives and create abundance is, for the first time in history, almost feasible. But swaying the masses to conform to a system without coercion, like herding cats, seems futile. Emotionally, we haven’t come very far from our cavemen ancestors and without institutions to instill fear and demand servitude, most societies would fall into anarchy.

I would sincerely love to see a system like this where there is no control-freak master and no ignorant slaves. But will it ever be possible? How flawed were the implementations of the ideals of Communism that Karl Marx envisaged? I truly respect the optimism of the Venus Project and am keen to learn more about it. But like a nagging toddler, the question lingers—who will clean the toilets?