There's an argument to be made for the negative connotations contributing to the term's longevity and adoption. In an environment where the myth of the genius is alive and kicking, taboos need to be broken to qualify for the label, though it's not always important what those taboos (social or otherwise) are as long as you have some worthy advocates.
A lot of this labeling is done in hindsight, unsurprisingly, and it's going to become more tame as the definition gets generalized and romanticized. Even the coding part is slowly becoming less important, as shown in some of the posts and links here. Eventually there will be some other club to place the exceptional in. We can pretend there's no value judgement in calling someone a "hacker" all we want, but that doesn't ring true. FWIW, my favorite hacker:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netochka_Nezvanova_(author)