"Burning Chrome", from a great collection by the same name, came in the same year as the arrival of Big Brother in Orwell's "1984". Personal computers resided in many classrooms and homes, CompuServ and Bulletin Board Systems were tying up phone lines across the nation, and colleges were putting together computer curriculum as fast as they could. MTV was a huge hit, and they actually played music videos (starting with The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" in '81). Game systems evolved from Atari 2600's and Pong, and the first video format wars found VHS killing off Sony's Betamax. Movies like "Bladerunner" evoked dark protagonists with flaws.
This inundation of flashy color video and sound, combined with computers and sedentary gaming, began to distract the family units until they were islands of personality. If everyone gathered around something it was normally the television where the only talking came from the tinny speakers. Technology became a disruptive influence to the previous generation's ways, foreshadowing how it would impact the basis of what humanity would transition into in the near future.
Gibson's writing voice is unique. He combines images in odd ways that can make sense if viewed from logical perspectives. "Burning Chrome" is a fast-paced cyberpunk story that brings in all of the mish-mash of corporate mergers with a layer of technical worldbuilding that gives the children of the Computer Age something to hang on to. Heroes are antiheroes, technology is both ubiquitous and deadly dangerous, and underneath it all are down-and-out humans just trying to survive.
It seems that over the years technology will always be a scary unknown. No matter how it advances, there's always the human element that can corrupt and pervert it.
Gibson's tale is brimming with technical jargon and cyberpunk sensibilities. This does make sense, since cyberpunk deals with a highly technical field where many people understand some of the lingo (and a lot of it has crept into modern-day language like Googling).