It feels like the word "hacking" is losing more and more meaning over time. In the beginning it was a word only people heavily into computers used. Then around

It feels like the word "hacking" is losing more and more meaning over time. In the beginning it was a word only people heavily into computers used. Then around the time of War Games it became a more commonly-known word, and connotated breaking in. Over the last couple decades more people became aware that hacking sometimes refers to building technical projects. But it still has a heavy connotation of breaking into a system or program. Hacking became cool once hackers started getting rich and gaining prominence in society. My son is 8, and many of his friends think they're hackers when they use a cheat code on a game. Most of them know they're not writing code and really changing the game, but they all want to think of themselves as hackers so they say they're hacking their games. Very few of them even really know what a line of code looks like yet. Any notion of "true" hacking is bound to be about putting walls up to say who's in and who's out. In reality, there are always people building new things, and there are always people trying to break into systems and programs.