I agree with you completely and my writing was (intentionally) too liberal artsy; so let me put on my technical hat and level with you why hacking is no longer subversive.

1) Growing Complexity of Software Projects: in some sense, it's not about computer programmers "selling out." Because in both FOSS and enterprise software, the code-base has usually third-party dozens if not more dependencies. Writing software is now a team effort, and not a single team effort but more like a company-with-frontend-backend-QA-teams effort. Think back to the day when a individual or two person could write a 2D side-scroller in DOS, with thoughts and stressing even over the monster's sprites and midi soundtrack. Nowadays, an EA game is more like Wikipedia, with many contributors working without being conscious of others. And while Wikipedia is good by itself, but tell me, could Wikipedia contributors by their collective consciousness write War and Peace or Catcher in the Rye? Likewise, Emacs, Linux and Ruby were progenated by single individuals with their respective unfettered individual vision.

2) Compromising Hacking for Hacking's Purpose. Hacking started as an art, without regard for commerce; see RMS as an example of someone who followed his vision without regard for profits or social acceptance. Programming, in its current state, is funny enough the only art form where its leading vanguards and self-processed practitioners openly condone "selling out." I feel that programmers funny enough aren't complete sell-out's but are stuck in the middle ground, the worst of all places. We are told by Paul Graham & Company, that great hackers should be motivated by their craft intrinsically, but should either keep one's day job or start up our own company with an viable business strategy to save up for "fuck you money" (pardon my french). But in reality, having an corporate job or starting a Web 2.0 CRUD start-up makes you beholden to either your boss or your potential customers whom increasingly treat programmers as commodities/assembly-line workers to deliver business requirements. Tell me, did Van Gogh or Sylvia Plath do focus group/market research so that they could decide which colors and content category would be most pleasing to their audience before they set out to compose their painting/poetry? Similarly I'd argue either did Linus/RMS/Wozniak when they set out to hack. Art exists for itself, it serves no purpose. If it does find audience, the best art inspires, challenges and mocks the audience, but it never panders to its audience.

3) Lack of Encouragement in the Community to Buck the Status Quo; I guess that this point is related to my previous point - but I feel the ethos/outlook's of the early 90's at the dawn of personal computing was that anything was possible, whereas today is optimizing on status quo. A survey of new YC startup's include rehashes of social networks/blogs/online music. While occasionally Hacker News feature posts on AI, Bioinformatics, green technology and Arduino. Why is everybody crowded in the web space? Where are the implementation of the next generation's ideas? Ray Kurzweil talks about the coming of Singularity, for instance. I'd argue it is because people are so fixated on monetizing that they no longer push envelope.

I just realized that in my zeal, my commentary turned out to be still pretty liberal artsy. Like how Bob Dylan would respond to some heckler at some festival he played at some years back, the heckler said "hey, Bob Dylan your new songs are no longer as relevant as your old songs," to which Dylan responded, "well, I'm at least out here writing songs, what are you doing?" So I'm going to stop now and take OP's advice go hack now.