You can often identify groups of people by the words and phrases they use. For instance, members of the same corporation may be familiar with some same corporate jargon and likewise those that make up the "fandom" of some book series/movie/etc may often share allusions/references to that thing when conversing with one another.

The language of famous people is no different—through the repetition of particular phrases, symbolism, and associations (who has met with and interviewed whom) you can begin to construct graphs (in the sense of "graph theory") showing the associations of people and what sorts of ideologies they espouse.

I've been kind of slow on realizing the above points, because as a nerd it is easy to get lost in useless details. Hyper-specialization can lead a person to be vulnerable/dependent on very specific systems/configurations. For example, if you had a law practice that specialized in exploiting on aspect of the law, a sudden change in the law would really disturb business—you would have to find some other niche and hope that your customers stay with you even though the initial service you provided isn't available anymore.

I hear programers saying similar sorts of things. Programers today aren't using the same technologies (at least ono the surface) that were used ten or twenty years ago; there are different abstractions, workflows, and so on that people must interface with everyday. A developer of a couple of decades back may be impressed by the degree of automation in many of today's tools—but this same developer might also be appalled at the state of "software bloat" and waste of computing power and human hours to get things set up and running.

Of course learning your tools well is always valuable—no matter what you're doing, it is a good idea to do a good job at it. However, it is also important to not be naïve and to recognize that there are people that lie, scheme, plot, etc with no regard to you and your well-being.

It is for this reason that it is imperative to not become isolated but to know that just as there are people "above" us that organize trouble, we too have the freedom to organize peacefully in such a way that we can support one another against those who desire harm for others or ill-gotten gain.