I, of course, never understood what he was involved with, but remember being excited when he broke into an army base, as the military was my passion at the time. I also never understood the constant calls from strange men our family would receive, nor did my parents. Now, my brother claims it was the FBI investigating him. Whether this is true or not, I do not know, but what I have always believed of hackers is that a certain mystique and romance is important to their work. He was excited by the fact that the FBI would be interested in him.
Hackers use something as easily accessible as a PC to create great waves in the larger world.
Although their tasks are often effective, they are not the most practical breed. Simply the fancy nomenclature they use and their tendency to form hacking groups shows that a full culture has developed. I have always been under the impression that most hackers did not find their calling for functional reasons, but to join a popular youth subculture. That is why I am not surprised that the vast majority were and are young, at least when the culture arose in the eighties. The identity with a formally named group further shows this need to belong.