Davey Winder
Encyclopedia
Davey Winder, previously known as "Wavey Davey" or "dwindera" but now settled as "happygeek", is a United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 IT
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

 pundit who has worked as a consultant, writer and journalist. He is the 'IT Security Journalist of the Year (UK) 2010', an award he has won three out of the four years it has been given.

Biography

After viral encephalitis
Encephalitis
Encephalitis is an acute inflammation of the brain. Encephalitis with meningitis is known as meningoencephalitis. Symptoms include headache, fever, confusion, drowsiness, and fatigue...

 left him severely disabled, he first got a computer to use video games to improve the coordination in the remaining arm in which he had the power of movement. He then used a word processor to learn how to read and write again, with the help of his late father and numerous 'Janet and John' kids' books. The disease had also changed his personality, devastating his marriage and social life. After experiments with Prestel
Prestel
Prestel , the brand name for the UK Post Office's Viewdata technology, was an interactive videotex system developed during the late 1970s and commercially launched in 1979...

, he found an early British online community, CIX
CIX
CIX was one of the earliest British Internet service providers. Founded in 1983 by Frank and Sylvia Thornley, it began as a FidoNet bulletin board system, but in 1987 was relaunched commercially as CIX...

 in the late 1980s, before direct connections to the internet were cheaply available outside academia, and this provided him with a new social and business life. Winder was contacted through CIX email over the internet by technological culture writer Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingold
-See also:* Collective intelligence* Information society* The WELL* Virtual community-External links:***** at TED conference** a 48MB Quicktime movie, hosted by the Internet Archive...

, a habitué of The Well, another early online community based in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, and eventually the two met in person at Winder's home; the meeting is described in Rheingold's book, The Virtual Community
The Virtual Community
The Virtual Community is a 1993 book about virtual communities by Howard Rheingold, a member of the early network system The Well. A second edition, with a new concluding chapter was published in 2000 by MIT Press.-External links:...

. A prolific author himself, Winder has had more than 20 books published. The most recent, Being Virtual, in conjunction with the Science Museum
Science Museum (London)
The Science Museum is one of the three major museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is part of the National Museum of Science and Industry. The museum is a major London tourist attraction....

in London which explores the realm of virtual identity and is part auto-biographical in nature. Winder is now fully recovered and no longer needs a wheelchair.

Publications

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