I only have my own experience on this subject, so I'm definitely projecting. I didn't mean that hacking is as culturally significant as the Dala horse or Semla

I only have my own experience on this subject, so I'm definitely projecting. I didn't mean that hacking is as culturally significant as the Dala horse or Semla. Just that, for example, nearly every kid in our town came to the LAN parties, even the "jocks." And everyone needed to troubleshoot networking issues, figure out how to get the games to run (cough without a serial key cough,) and so on. The biggest jock in town was cool because he played a MUD without ASCII colors, making him "hardcore." (Not to mention that the largest LAN party in the world, Dreamhack, which continues to this day, is in Sweden.) Does that mean that all those kids became hackers? Of course not. But clearly being exposed to system internals coupled with a driving curiosity is how a lot of hackers got started, and so it's no surprise to me that IKEA has capable infosec talent.