I can’t find the quote now so I’m sure I’m going to butcher this, but i remember seeing some interview with Gibson where he said computer nerds at the time were all laughing at him because the sheer scale of networking speeds he was talking about (up to hundreds of baud!) were physically impossible. Of course, his total ignorance of computers ended up being more accurate than what nerds at the time thought was possible.

The computer in question being a Pac-Man machine some teenagers were playing on.

Which goes with the weirdly analogue and vaguely magic-like nature of Gibsonian cyberspace: an ethereal plane of light, populated by vaguely demonic forces which can physically melt the terminal you’re using if they get you, only expressed through the metaphor of computers.