Ironically, focusing criticism on the aesthetics is itself "staying shallow". Much cyberpunk media does serve as a critique of the status quo or an imagined future dystopia, as I assume he would prefer, but with some neon on the surface.
I don't think Gibson minds the aesthetic in particular; what he is saying, if I understand him correctly, is that nobody cares about cyberpunk except for the aesthetic. There's nothing beyond it. If there is something, it's the same old tropes about big bad evil 80s-style corporations, usually with a vague Japanese or Asian theme. Everything that was novel about cyberpunk has now been absorbed into the mainstream and has become just another trope to be used by videogame/movie/anime authors.
I would argue that reading, today, absolutely is punk. When the main-stream is delivered at a sixth grade level, in 15 second sound bites with talking heads or funny dances behind it. . . what is more punk that being extraordinarily well-read?
>what is more punk that being extraordinarily well-read
Having recently been to several punk rock shows (read: damp basement noise fests), I'd say: having a blue collar job, being against "the system", doing copious amounts of cocaine and speed on their time off, and having their entire body blasted with tattoos such as a hand flipping you off, a trash can overflowing with garbage, and many insults. I thought this particular kind of people didn't exist anymore, but no, they're still alive and moshing in the basements of most cities.
I'm not entirely convinced of that attitude; plenty of science fiction in a cyberpunk setting have strong underlying messages, of e.g. personal identity, capitalism, privacy, overpopulation, sex work, drugs, classism, AI, environment / global warming, etc; some of the big names there would be (imo, I'm no expert and I can't think of much) Ghost in the Shell, Altered Carbon, The Matrix, some episodes of Love Death & Robots and even Black Mirror, to name a few.
