You nailed it. The reason that SF isn't doing near-future predictions anymore is that reality is moving faster than fiction ever did. Gibson was about the last guy to get a leap on it in a big way and look how dated Neuromancer (a supremely brilliant book, IMHO) looks today! That "cyberspace" thingy he made up, for example. Instead of super-hackers meeting in smoky bars to hammer out deals for industrial cracks, we have grandmothers searching the 'Net for quilting patterns. Tough to get a novel out of that...
Murray Leinster's short story "A Logic Named Joe" predicted both home computers, and the widespread use of the Internet by the general public. And this was all the way back in 1946.
...Which he cribbed from Vernor Vinge's True Names.