I think the behavior of people was a little different at that time. From my experience, almost everyone was either doing office job via computer or playing Dota, WOW, MU, Counter-Strike, Half-Life. Forums and social medias weren't as popular/active as they are today, so, lack of information about innovations was very common.
As a matter of fact, I think forums were much more popular then than they are now. Forums, or message boards, are the evolutionary successor to electronic mailing lists or newsgroups and were the primary place to conduct public discussions before social networks took over. I cannot recall the exact date when I joined my first forum, but I remember being active in three or four forums in 2010 when twitter and facebook were still very new at that time.