In the past several decades, there has been a monumental shift in the distribution of wealth on the planet. A new global elite, led by pioneers in telecommunications, personal computing, Internet services and mobile devices, has claimed an aggregate net worth of almost $800 billion of the $7 trillion in assets held by the wealthiest 1,000 people in the world.

The barons of this new connected age are interchangeably referred to as technologists, engineers and even geeks, but they all have one thing in common: They are hackers....