I live in rural NorCal and what you described became much easier after becoming a ham and finding a local amateur radio club.
The local ham radio community has its own meetups, but even just chatting about tech on the air or in scheduled on-air tech nets (there's one here every week) has been a terrific way to connect with people who are basically hackers even if they don't call themselves that.
Most of our most well-known local techies here have been involved in ham radio. Carl Sassenrath is probably a good example here where I live locally though I have only heard him talk on the air I think.
Plus with the meetups there is almost always someone providing for food & drink at the same time. One time a guy showed up and said "I needed to use up some budget money we didn't use from last time" and poof, two big boxes of donuts from a great local place, plus coffee and juice IIRC. ("That was awesome" --Kevin Malone)
Also the meetups are usually 100% free and open to non-hams as well. Just an idea. Meetups and field days are often loosely organized enough that people will seem pretty casual, maybe leave for lunch time or a taco bell run / pop home to get a lawn chair / come & go throughout the day.
Personally I got my license back in 2017 and within a year was working radio communications for a rural ultra-marathon on the coast here & helping locate a lost runner. That felt pretty wild and I met a lot of great people. And there's still not reliable cell service in that area last time I checked.
The stars are the limit for ham radio btw. A lot of people think about it in more like CB radio terms, but where I live there's been plenty of mesh networking / AREDN talk & experimentation, always something going on with digital modes in general, some radio astronomy, etc. We have access to the WIN System as well, so your handheld radio may pick up converstions between Hawaii & Ireland like mine did [0].
(Keep in mind you can also buy a ham radio or scanner radio & listen in without a license, if you're into gadgets. You could have fun learning while doing some local radio amateur group research & recon before deciding whether to dive in)
One other method to recommend: If there are small shops like internet cafes, computer stores, or local internet providers around they should 100% be able to hook you up with relevant info if you ask them.
Warning, in sufficiently rural areas & if you seem enthusiastic, you may be asked _very quickly_ to get involved in politics as they relate to broadband and (...what was it...S-M-R-T? Oh STEM) STEM, like "hey I'd like to have you join our board, this is an official invite" and it may be a good idea to mentally prepare for that regardless of your answer. This seems to happen less often in ham radio than it does when chatting with tech business owners though.
And still, I find a ton of value to being online as it's way more compatible with my introvert side and typically even closer at hand than the local resources.
Good luck to you--
0. https://twitter.com/systematikk/status/1060650624948137984