Comment by gopher_space

Hacking was mostly about gaining access before AOL and there was absolutely a "let's give this kid a summer job" attitude floating around after War Games came out.

The chain of resource acquisition and information gathering necessary to arrive at a point where you need to make a long-distance phone call you could never afford was impressive in itself. Calling card fraud by a bright minor for educational purposes against a corporate entity absolutely loathed by every adult at the time just wasn't that big of a deal.

From my perspective the point of being a hacker is individual but follows observable desire paths. A lot of those have been filled in now.