The Good Hacker – Part 1: James Arthur Cattell

As  I sit in the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I thought it most appropriate to launch our new series on hackers.  From here at MIT, unarguably the home of hackerdom, I should explain that this series of interviews is in part motivated by our wish to reclaim the term ‘hacker’ from the image of spotty teenagers,  sitting in dark rooms causing mayhem via their internet connections, as the mainstream media might have you believe…  From it’s humble origins in the Tech Model Railroad Club to the current organisational culture at Facebook, hackerdom has been a force for good.  There are now people who subscribe to and live by hacker ethics in more industries than I can count, all united by the desire to push the boundaries of what is possible.  Our goal with this series is to introduce you to the hackers we have met on our travels in the hope that they will inspire you to evolve your practice, and we can reclaim the idea of hackerdom as a positive and ever more necessary force for change.

Without further ado, I would like to present our first hacker friend, James Arthur Cattell.  I first met James when we were local government officers. We obviously had a similar itch to scratch because we never met through our official functions, but rather on the public servant unconference circuit where we thought we might be able to find kindred spirits to fix the problems we could see in government that government itself wasn’t aware enough to address.  In that community James is known as ‘Fingers’ Cattell, mainly on account of his incredible typing speed and stamina, but we got to know of that because of his incessant scheduling hackery. Yes, James can look at cats in a thunderstorm, and fearlessly flips open a laptop because he is reasonably sure that he can build a tool to herd them…  James is also one of the first people in government who would talk to me about the concept of hacking public services, or government hackers.  We were mightily aware that that you don’t just label yourself a hacker without some demonstrable competence and then community validation behind that.  But in those days, that community of government hackers wasn’t necessarily widespread or evident.  These days James plays an important role in developing this much needed community, I’ll let him continue the story in his own words…

What do you do for a living?

Community development manager at the government digital service

What ding you are trying to make in the universe?

Enable public servants to share their ideas, problems and solutions

What is your life mantra?

There is no spoon

Nikola Tesla or Thomas Edison?

Nikola Tesla

Favourite place in the world? and why?

Zurich, Switzerland. Its clean, beautiful and it works

Who is your hero?

Gillian Cattell, my Mother

Who is the most interesting hacker you have come across? and why?

Glyn Wintle. He is a genius

How would you define ‘hacker’ using only words allowed by upgoer5?http://splasho.com/upgoer5/

Someone who has balls, brains and brings change

What is the coolest hack you have seen?

A customisable postal address shortener, e.g. 007 = 85 Albert Embankment, LONDON, SE1 7TP

What is the biggest obstacle for hackers in traditional organisations?

Culture, i.e. lack of understanding

What is the value of having hackers in your organisation?

They JFDI. “If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it’s that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously…”