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21st Century Gadgets. Which are the most important so far?

Yeah, Apple features quite heavily.

Q's Bag of tricks - from the Designing 007 Fifty Years of Bond Style press view in London today
Q's Bag of tricks - from the Designing 007 Fifty Years of Bond Style press view in London today
Image: William Parker/UK Press/Press Association Images

AS AN EXHIBITION opens in London to celebrate fifty years of the gadget king, James Bond, Business Insider has taken a look at the impact of real-life technology in the 21st-century.

Although we’re only 12 years into the 100-year-period, it’s already been a busy one for technology.

Here is what they believe are the 10 most important devices to emerge in recent years. Do you agree?

21st Century Gadgets. Which are the most important so far?
1 / 10
  • 10.Flip Video Camera

    The Flip may be dead now, but it helped kicked off the mobile video revolution by making a joke out of more expensive camcorders that used tape and big batteries. It was easy to use and affordable, while still shooting high-quality video. Image: Amazon
  • 9. The Wii

    The Wii thrust Nintendo back into the spotlight for a bit with its gyroscope-based controls and its mostly family-friendly games, where the focus is always first and foremost to have fun. Image: Stuart Hughes
  • 8. MacBook Air

    Apple's super-thin laptop was a dream come true for travel warriors everywhere. It offered everything you needed and nothing that you didn't, sacrificing the optical drive to keep the device as thin and portable as possible. Today, we have a slew of other thin and light PCs called Ultrabooks. Image: (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
  • 7. Xbox and Kinect

    The Kinect opened up the Xbox wider than we anticipated. It was initially a way to interact with games, but it's evolved into much more than that. A huge crowd of independent developers have taken it to new levels, integrating it with robots to map environments in 3D and respond to human gestures. Here, Usher performs to introduce the music video game 'Dance Central Three' for the Xbox 360 with Kinect. Image: AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes
  • 6. The USB Drive

    The simple things are always the best, eh? Patented in 2000, the USB drive spread like wildfire as a way to quickly transport files between computers. You can now buy thumb drives with capacities as high as 256 GB, and we may soon see them coming in measures of terabytes. Image: AP Photo/Paul Sakuma
  • 5. Amazon Kindle

    The Kindle has become the household name for e-readers. You can grab almost any book you can name and begin reading it in minutes without even leaving the house. Image: AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, file
  • 4. The iPod

    What a game-changer! Introduced in 2001, it allowed people to carry around practically their whole music collection. This is the original caption from 23 October 2001: Apple's new digital music player, iPod, is displayed after its introduction by Apple Computer Inc. chief executive officer Steve Jobs during a news conference in Cupertino. Macintosh owners can download 1,000 CD-quality songs onto the iPod's five gigabyte hard drive in less than 10 minutes. The MP3 player works only on Macintoshes running Apple's proprietary operating systems and iTunes 2, the company's latest music software. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
  • 3. Android OS

    We're referring to the operating system here, not a specific device. Google's mobile operating system has managed to find its way into all kinds of devices, from tablets to mobile phones to smart TV sticks. Best of all, it's totally free and open source. Image: Flickr/Jonathan_W
  • 2. The iPad

    Apple's tablet is perfectly suited for small-scale personal computing. As such, it's found a home with users all over the world. The iTunes App Store extends its usability even more, offering up games, utilities, and reference apps. Even our Taoiseach uses it!
  • 1. The iPhone

    Although you won't catch Enda with an iPhone (he loves his Nokia too much). Here Irish rugby star Brian O'Driscoll comes to terms with the first generation iPhone in 2008. Since then the product has become so successful it accounts for half of Apple's business (which is big, mega, ginormous - you get the idea). They are our means of communication, connection, and even entertainment. As we presumably edge closer to the launch of the iPhone 5, we can only expect the mania to continue. Image: Adeline Pericart/Photocall Ireland

More: The early gadgets of the housework revolution>

Published with permission from:

Business Insider
Business Insider is a business site with strong financial, media and tech focus.

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