Hamming, "You and Your Research" (1995) [video]
I take some exception to the part at ~14:46 where he says essentially that if the work you're doing isn't important and isn't likely to be important, why are you doing it?<p>I'd suggest that a lot of our progress is because of people that are passionate about things that other people think are a dead end.  Also, some fields are more mysterious than others.