Personally, I've always just contrasted cyberpunk with the writing of more traditional science fiction authors like Isaac Asimov. Now, I think Asimov was a brilliant man and a talented writer. But his science fiction tends to have white, middle-class people in spaceships talking to other white, middle-class people in spaceships. Oh, and talking to robots. Asimov's rules of robotics are classics.

Cyberpunk, on the other hand, tends to be about the underbelly of future society. The characters are often hackers, cyber-criminals, drug addicts, mercenaries, smugglers, bodyguards, or just people trying to make it through the day.

Another distinguishing aspect of cyberpunk literature in my mind is that people tend to IMPLANT technology in their bodies. Sometimes it is a "jack" for a computer cable in the base of the skull to allow direct computer interface for a hacker.

Or it is a weapon of some sort. One of William Gibson's signature characters is named Molly. Molly is a "street samurai" or "hired muscle". She has her eyes sealed behind plastic lenses implanted in her face. She has scapel-like blades that extend from under her fingers. Molly is a character who has "punked" her appearance and body out with useful bits of technology. I suggest Gibson's books Neuromancer or Count Zero.

Case, the narrator in Neuromancer, was a cyberspace cowboy, a hacker with a jack in his head. When I read about the deep web or the invisible web I think of Case surfing the three dimensional web of the matrix with its artificial intelligences, sophisticated anti-virus programs and lethal electronic counter-measures programs.

"The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games," said the voice-over "in early graphics programs and military experimentation with cranial jacks." On the Sony, a two dimensional space war faded behind a forest of mathematically generated ferns, demonstrating the spacial possibilities of logarithmic spirals; cold blue military footage burned through, lab animals wired into test systems, helmets feeding into fire control circuits of tanks and war planes. "Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts...A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non-space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights...receding..."Neuromancer

I also like Walter John Williams. His novel Hardwired is very cyberpunk. My personal favorite is Voice of the Whirlwind. In Voice of the Whirlwind, the main characters is a clone, the beta. The original (his alpha) hadn't updated his memories in the last thirty years. The main character is a citizen-soldier trained by a transnational corporation that no longer exists. The beta learns that his alpha was murdered. Adrift in a dangerous world with skils and memories from thirty years ago, the beta tries to make sense of it all and use his military skills. One of my favorite phrases from the book is "mind like water", which represents the character's zen like focus to deal with the crisis of the hour.

I think this type of dystopian future is far more likely than Isaac Asimov's sanitized futures.