It’s easy to construct a narrative of victimhood; and a narrative of victimhood is as easily palatable as a Big Mac. Sure, you can argue that the modern condition is a finely jawed trap: bound by the chains of debt peonage, our horizons have been ineluctably delimited. But I’d say we’re equal parts victims and victimizers — preying not merely on one another, but our own better selves. When it comes to real human prosperity, in the crudest terms of political economy, “demand” is about what people have the impertinence to, well, demand — and perhaps the simple fact is that we’ve become a society that’s simply not demanding enough.

It was tough to pull a quote for this one so if you’ve got a few minutes I recommend reading the whole thing. I don’t know that I agree with it wholly, however, it is good to see someone rising above one’s normal 6-odd-foot perspective and seeing the world from a different angle.

/via Alex “One who knows HTML” Hillman.

“Sometimes the next thing does less, and is better for it — not in every way, but overall. If we never let go of old technology, we’d be buried in complexity and crushed by outdated crap.”

Keep this quote in mind when the next version of Viddler is released. Sometimes you just have to get rid of things for the sake of making progress. It isn’t easy. But progress rarely is.

Go forth, and hack! Oh, and its completely open source too. (More on this later.)