A hacker is motivated to hack great software/systems.(Hacking in the "modern" sense has been more about software than hardware, since not as many people have the resources to tinker around with hardware,potentially breaking in the process).<p>I would argue the reason why hacking has kind of "died" is because of the massive amounts of garbage software that gets put out.<p>On top of that, hacking isn't actually dead,it just kind of moved in the shadows.(This has been de facto true after the 2012 "era of big-brother revelations", and shortly when the "big figures" of hacking have jailed.)<p>I'd say firstly modern hackers have to always adapt by "working twice as hard" while having the "penetrating" mindset towards software that becomes increasingly harder to penetrate(through different techniques,which CS has developed firstly at theoretical then practical levels).
Secondly,software developers now usually work in groups and are incentivized by money.Even if they're less skilled individually, together they manage to create harder software to penetrate.<p>However,this "brothership" in the hacking community is very hard to acquire,because 90% of the time it is motivated by something other than money: ethics,sense of justice, etc.(What i subjectively consider a "hacker" isn't someone who "hacks" an ATM by putting a cloning device on a facade)<p>On top of this,you add the fact that governments try to gain more and more control over the internet and all-things computing, punishing people who "legally deserved it" but did the society a favor(Snowden,Assange,etc. basically any leak that has been "proven true" but the means of acquiring information left the boot-lickers unsatisfied).<p>On the bright side, i wouldn't exactly say hacking is dead,it's just that the computing sphere is changing so fast, it leaves hackers undecided.Some people don't even bother when in the relatively short future we'll probably see the "downfall" of classical computing as we know it.