How to become a hacker

First and foremost, differentiating between a 'hacker' and a 'cracker' is important :

A 'hacker' is a person who loves to 'hack' code. Here, 'hack' is to be taken into sense of 'hacking wood'. This has nothing to do with computer security.

Here is an excerpt from a hacker (ESR) :
[QUOTE]
There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ‘hacker’. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker.
[UNQUOTE]

Then, there are 'crackers' who break into computers, usually illegally. These people most of the time don't know much, or are 'script kiddies.'
Unfortunately, the media didn't distinguish between the two, and labelled crackers as hackers.

Here is the howto :
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

and A brief History of Hackerdom :

http://catb.org/~esr/writings/hacker-history/hacker-history.html

The above document has been written by Eric S. Raymond, who is the president of OSI. His site is interesting, and his blog is even more interesting, lots of subjects, some better left unmentioned.