I found that AOL was nowhere near enough, wasn't 'true network' (I understood this at 10), was heavily criticized by the PC media because of this (which I also used to read) so I switched it off and discovered BBS's

The BBS's were the foundation of almost every person I have met in tech, every job, all dev, every startup I have been involved with and there is a very strong camaraderie amongst the early BBS hackers (most of us went on to become v early web hackers).

So I see from how inside AOL you think your theory might hold, but outside of it there was an entire larger network that was far more interesting