...and you're drinking the kool-aide. Mitnick's primary talent was social engineering, getting passwords merely by asking. His technical attacks weren't all that sophisticated.
The whole point of one of his books, maybe the first one (I'm not getting recall on the title just now) was all about how social engineering was the greater risk, and its a point well taken.
Every system and every organization is vulnerable to the social engineerring approach. It's more dependable and often a faster way in than probing around for a technical hack.
It was an excellent read.
Mitnick, was an accomplished hacker precisely because of his versatiliy. While he might not have been the most talented hacker, technically, his understanding of large orgnizational structures got him a lot further then purely technical exploits (which he was still pretty good at) would have.