Davey Winder

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Davey Winder, previously known as "Wavey Davey" or "dwindera" but now settled as "happygeek", is a United Kingdom IT pundit who has worked as a consultant, writer and journalist. He is the 'IT Security Journalist of the Year (UK) 2006', and ten years ago he won the Technology Journalist of the Year award. One of the original contributing editors of .net magazine, he is now contributing editor of PC Pro as well as a contributor to IT Pro, Information World Review, Microscope, Microsoft Business, PC Plus, Pocket Lint, Tom's Hardware and DaniWeb.

After viral encephalitis 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, he found an early British online community, 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, a habitue of The Well, another early online community based in the United States, and eventually the two met in person at Winder's home; the meeting is described in Rheingold's book, The Virtual Community. He is now fully recovered, has re-married and no longer needs a wheelchair.