William Gibson himself has said that he finds it odd when at talks and book signings people come up to him to thank him for inspiring them to pursue a career in technology. What about the futures he imagined where there was no middle class and everybody who wasn't super rich were criminals trying to get some of the wealth from the super rich made people think "yes, that's what I want to be a part of"?

I think it's because prior to that, their imagined future had only the super rich and the super poor, and the super poor had no agency whatsoever. Cyberpunk showed a path via which an average person could at least eke out _some_ sort of life in the dystopian hellscape.