Many of you will be too young to remember the 70s. If you are old enough you will remember orange and brown being your favourite colours. Corduroy pants being fashionable (and stretchy), the Olympics being attacked for the first time ever in Munich, and maybe even the most important event of the decade� Germany winning the soccer worldcup in �74.

I grew up in the 70s. It was a time of change. We�d just passed the sexual revolution. Dope and LSD were up there, but towards the end of the 70s and well into the 80s we were bombarded with the evil that drugs do in the cinemas. I remember two movies that really stuck in my mind and led me to stay away from drugs. Once was �Die Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo� (�Zoo Station�) and a second one I can�t remember the title of. A series about this guy that got hooked on heroin and eventually throws himself in front of a train. My parents made sure that I watched those and to be honest looking back they did the right thing. I�ll never forget those films and I never touched drugs. Call me old fashioned.

On the up side America had just managed to drop three guys on the moon and bring them back alive making them instant heroes (that was 35 years ago!). We had an influx of electrical appliances, ranging from coffee makers and can openers, to sophisticated vacuum cleaners and dishwashers. We were connected to natural gas (even though my Dad still made us kids go down to the local electrician to get our domestic gas bottle filled up every week or two, because he refused to be billed monthly) We got colour TV and with it the great American and British series, that I wasn�t allowed to watch, such as Dallas and Dynasty, Catweasle and of course Star Trek. We had the Jetsons and Dr Who. Sure, all those were dubbed into German. Many a time, when my parents would be out we would sneak into the TV room (yes, back then households had only one TV unless they were filthy rich) and watch one of those forbidden movies. I remember well when we sat there one night watching �Irma LaDouce� and my parents walked in on us. I must have been 6 or 7 and had no idea what a hooker was.

Anyway, in that good old time (that also brought us the Vietnam war, a wave of terrorism and the advent of AIDS), I grew up in a sleepy little town in Germany, dreaming of one day being the greatest scientist on earth, to fly to Mars and Venus, to build robots and cars that could fly and of course, every second construction I managed in Lego was a space ship (and that was before all those fancy extras came out� Legos were square blocks, and a �fancy� lego was one that was 3x2 instead of 4x2, because those blessed things never fit in anywhere)

My favourite authors in those days were Sagan, Heinlein and Asimov. Later on I discovered Clarke as well. My favourite books were �Contact� by Sagan, which some of you may remember from the film with Jodie Foster, Heinlein�s �Lucky Star� and Asimov�s robot books. I loved to imagine a world in the early 21^st century and how it would be when we had cars that drove themselves and even when we had to walk we would have footpaths that would move at different speeds towards our destinations. I would dream for weeks on how to make these projects happen.

I loved the technology, the endless pages of technical detail these authors would put into their books. It made the technology so real, so� accessible.

What fascinated me the most thou was the human aspect. How would humanity fit into the new world? One thing that really got me thinking was the definition of humanity. Imagine being born, and getting into a bad car accident, and your arms, legs, torso are all replaced by artificial limbs, your internal organs are replaced, you have false teeth, false ears and eyes� what makes you a human? Isn�t it the soul? Isn�t it the intelligence, the brain, the mind? What if you could replace a brain with an artificial one and make it think. At what point does it become human?

Asimov was always on the forefront of those thoughts. His robots series, including the three elementary basic robotic laws have been an inspiration to many. Even in the real world, the three laws have become the basic foundation for some of the programs that have been running in AI labs.

A few years ago, we had an influx of movies that were loosely based on these ideas. You might remember movies like �AI� and the �Bicentennial Man�. I loved those movies.

Some may disagree, but I loved this movie. Then again, I�m a geek and I like toys and walking can openers.