Like thousands, tens of thousands, maybe just short of McDonald’s order of magnitude (Billions and Billions) of other people, I am feeling the gaping information void of Stephen Downe’s hiatus. OLDaily been a mainstay of my ed tech input for so long I cannot remember, and it was Stephen’s work that opened my eyes to RSS in 2002. It was his pointing to my unknown blog in 2003 that brought some readers outside of my circle of comrades.
Okay, the world has not ended, the sun rises every day, life goes on, all that glib stuff. Stephen’s automated distribution of content, rip, mixed, categorized, and fed, is still there as EDU_RSS.
But I must say, I feel the absence of Stephen’s energy, his perspective, his sheer forceful attitude, his arcane knowledge of subjects and words that have never graced my vocabulary, and just his unique sense of ‘Stephen-ness.’ I hope whatever goes on in the hiatus goes as best it can for him, and whether he returns or not, I can live with.
I just had to say publicly, there is a huge, gaping, Stephen Downes Shaped hole in the internet right now.
Update Thanks to a pointer from Scott Leslie, we see that Stephen has posted a Hiatus FAQ on his site.
well, thanks to Stephen … I just noticed it.
Ah, but I got it from your blog, not his. I see I misworded my credit statement– you did not write the FAQ.
Until his hiatus ends, I’ve weened OLDaily from my feeds.
I miss his words too.