In context, it doesn't appear that he actually believes the first video games, for example, to be a marvel - he's deliberately describing the programmers at MIT in a way to make them seem childish and naive. This makes his point that Zuckerberg is both childish and exploitative an easier one to support.

Immediately preceding sentence: "The heroes of his adolescence were the original hackers. These weren’t malevolent data thieves or cyberterrorists. Zuckerberg’s hacker heroes were disrespectful of authority. They were technically virtuosic, infinitely resourceful nerd cowboys, unbound by conventional thinking."

I think you're reading a sarcasm into it that I'm not seeing?

> "Plenty of companies have similarly appropriated hacker culture – hackers are the ur-disrupters – but none have gone as far as Facebook."

I think it's actually painting Zuckerberg as a "wannabe" and in some way not a real hacker?

>I think you're reading a sarcasm into it that I'm not seeing?

It's possible - I've also read his book and some other work of his. He's a very good writer, though, so if it's there, it's almost certainly intentional.

If you follow that paragraph, 'With their free time, they played epic pranks, which happened to draw further attention to their own cleverness – ' is then followed up by Foer's description of them as the enemy of suited bureaucracy. It makes you imagine young people going against a paternal figure, but the examples he chooses both cut their credibility and show that their fight was ultimately useless. It also provides better juxtaposition for his ultimate point about Zuckerberg's perversion of the hacker ethos.

You're right, he is painting Zuckerberg as a wannabe. A boy who wants to emulate naive heroes but doesn't have the 'technical virtuosity' and ends up exploiting the culture he's almost but not quite a part of, turning it from something fairly harmless into something that Foer believes is extremely dangerous for society.

but it's a valid point too. The 'hacker ethos' is inherently childish in a way that can be both seen negatively and positively.

The disregard for rules, the commons and so forth is what makes it so easy for Zuckerberg to turn it into a pseudo-subversive marketing reel. It's easy to twist it that way, and Zuckerberg is not the only guy doing it.