This facetious exercise illustrates a worrisome development to which we had better start paying more attention. Since (in principle) all of us understand the basics of accelerator physics, there is a disturbing tendency to denigrate this essential branch of our field, to relegate it to technicians the implication being that first-rate minds are drawn to more cutting-edge physics problems. Combined with the general trend towards increasing specialization, we have largely decoupled and discounted an activity which in fact largely defines and limits the future of our field. Furthermore, if you look seriously at the designs and R&D work related to any of the proposed future accelerators linear colliders (2, 3), hadron colliders (4), as well as very ambitious ideas like the muon collider (5), or the CLIC two-beam acceleration concept (6) you will find a host of interesting and highly challenging physics problems. As a community, I doubt that we are doing enough towards attracting, training, supporting, and encouraging the next generation of accelerator physicists the cadre of first-rate, creative, and experienced people without whom no future accelerators are likely to get built. In that case everything else I say in this talk addresses a moot topic, since we will have failed before we have even properly begun.
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