“After the death of his father, T’Challa (pictured in the center) returns home to the African nation of Wakanda to take his rightful place as king. When a powerful enemy suddenly reappears, T’Challa’s mettle as king — and as Black Panther — gets tested when he’s drawn into a conflict that puts the fate of Wakanda and the entire world at risk. Faced with treachery and danger, the young king must rally his allies and release the full power of Black Panther to defeat his foes and secure the safety of his people.”
Protecting the resources and technological advancements seems to be a priority among most in the secretive nation of Wakanda. Who could blame them? Many of the technology shown in Black Panther is something far beyond what we have today or what we could imagine having in the near future.
Kimoyo Beads
“Kimoyo Beads are a piece of advanced communication technology developed and used in the technologically advanced nation of Wakanda. They’re are similar to the Kimoyo Card as they tap into the Vibranium of Wakanda. The technology cannot be exported as it simply can’t work outside the country.”
In a world without cellphones, there are Kimoyo Beads. Kimoyo Beads serve as a form of communication, entertainment, and health monitor in the nation of Wakanda. If you want more features then you can simply add more beads. These beads can be added for any situation such as tracking, home security or personal security. It’s sort of like a cellphone but with way more features and advancements.
In the movie, if you’d like to communicate with someone then you can call them with your Kimoyo Beads and a hologram of yourself will pop up ( as shown in the second image) in the palm of their hands. The Kimoyo Beads can also record moments that you'd like to capture throughout the day or over time and can display a vast range of audio and video files in the Wakanda database system.
Seems cool right? Do we have the same access to the same technology present in the Kimoyo Beads? When you take a look at the Kimoyo Beads, it is simply Wakanda’s cellphone but in the palm of their hands. Instead of dialing a number or looking through your contacts for someone to call you can essentially think about who you want to call and call them within seconds. Same with if you want to want to watch a video or quickly inquire about any information available in the Wakanda database. We have access to holograms and similar technologies so we can replicate it but with the space and technology required to hold the same amount of information, it seems impossible to create a product with all the same features of a Kimoyo Bead.
Kimoyo Beads Today?
Would it be an easy transition for us to switch from cellphones to Kimoyo Beads? In Wakanda, everyone gets a Kimoyo Bead from the time that they were born. Everywhere else that doesn’t seem to be the case, we tend to get our first cellphones when we are much older. To transition from using a cellphone to Kimoyo Beads would be difficult since many iterations of the cellphone look similar and changing to a beaded bracelet would go against all the things that we are used to. No longer can we spend hours on Instagram and Snapchat scrolling through other people’s feed or hours surfing the web. With the Kimoyo Beads, we are not tapping, swiping, and scrolling which are all the things that we consider to be “natural” gestures. It’s not impossible for us to get used to Kimoyo Beads but like anything new, it will take us time to adapt to all the features of the bead.
