>>51269
That angle is easy enough, university basements were the holding place of this sort of knowledge since the first one was founded by the church and even before that in Solomon's temple.
When universities invented the internet, the spread event happened in the esoteric alts of the usenet/bbs.
But there is a lot more to it. Snowcrash is precisely about the use of technical language as a tool of mental expansion via analogy, even if its terms of masonry, geometry, metallurgy or in this case, programming. But since computers are closer to human brains, it is the most effective metaphor for self-understanding.

It was interesting to see I had been indirectly influenced by this same movement from the moment I was born. Feels less lonely, somehow.