What's the status quo now?

"We’re working on an aquarium in the office, so naturally we have an aquarium. We have a lot of… marvelous little animals, mostly invertebrates and some fishes, that sort of cluster together, have high territoriality in the way they act and behave. And if those little animals feel too much of a stream, too much of a current flow, they’re very uneasy. These animals are sort of geared to the status quo…. On the other hand, there are the pelagic animals. And if that current stops, they’re in trouble. They’re dependent on change. Their whole idea of security is essentially when the current is flowing by them. That gives them oxygen upon [which] they live, and that sort of frees them from other predators, it brings them closer to food. They’re very secure in change. And I have a feeling in a way that we as a society and as a group are gradually becoming pelagic in our feeling. That if anyone is going to really feel secure, he must not have an insistence on the status quo, but he must feel secure… in change."

-Charles Eames, from the first of six Norton Lectures in 1970. Excerpted from An Eames Primer.

2010/01/22 - 12:31 AM