There seems to be a common idea going around, at least in North America. People who may have once been interested in hacking computers are looking past them to other areas. MAKE magazine is just one example of this need being addressed. Then there is this article in nytimes.com about people hacking IKEA. As the article puts it:

Ms. Lam, Mr. Csiky and Ms. Domanic have never met but they are nonetheless related, connected by a global (and totally unofficial) collective known as the Ikea Hackers. Do-it-yourselfers and technogeeks, tinkerers, artists, crafters and product and furniture designers, the hackers are united only by their perspective, which looks upon an Ikea Billy bookcase or Lack table and sees not a finished object but raw material: a clean palette yearning to be embellished or repurposed. They make a subset of an expanding global D.I.Y. movement, itself a huge tent of philosophies and manifestoes including but not confined to anticonsumerism, antiglobalism, environmentalism and all-purpose iconoclasm.

For the article, surf over to Romancing the Flat Pack: Ikea, Repurposed – New York Times