I think "bleak" is just another point of view. Thinking back at how the 50's saw science fiction and the future in general, we could easily conclude that what we have was quite a "bleak" version of that vision.
The general cyberpunk point of view is just a radical departure from the established line of thought (and forecasting).
The fun thing to do when reading a cyberpunk novel is to watch for things that stay similar. And there are quite a lot. Actually, if you start pulling apart the shockingly weird things that are depicted (like for example, the SF-Oakland bridge becoming a shantytown) you notice that in the end society still works by the same rules as it does now. Which I personally find quite funny, given that one would expect technology to bring some kind of impact to cultural and societal frameworks.
I agree with most of what you're saying. It's just another point of view, and it might only even seem "bleak" because Gibson is so nonchalant about the worlds he writes. They're futures that the characters just accept as normal, whatever they are. As another poster says, only the children realized that they were in space.
If you read them with a sense of wonderment, and put aside the narrative, you see things like (in the book I'm reading) an SUV that can survive a flood and a massive accident with impressive safety technology. That's pretty cool.
The rest of the book isn't about a bright, shiny happy future. Life isn't like that for anyone, and it's not something I could see being enjoyable to read or watch, as a style in a dramatic narrative. A comedy, maybe, but they tend not to be ground-breaking future-predictors.
