The short-term vision is: I research on something which I can use tomorrow, and for some politicians it is even better if it's today. But if you do this, you can only do targeted research. If you only do targeted research, you lose the side-routes.

Good people climb quickly - just like in a company.

We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature. The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle's properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe.

If there is no fundamental science then there is no basis for applied science. We have to strike a balance. 23 years ago the World Wide Web was born here. It has changed the world dramatically.