It's probably not the jargon but the writing style. Gibson is one of the few sf/fantasy writers that doesn't feel the need to be easy to follow. Breath of fresh air if you ask me.
It's funny, I think the second one is easier to parse. I loved Neuromancer when it got shoved in my face in 1992.
I don't understand how people can find Gibson hard to read. I somehow lump him together with Hemingway. He may use more punctuation, but his phrases are bite size and flowing.
I see the influence of beat poets. His prose isn't a paragraph long sentence to parse into some giant syntax tree. It's a stream of fragments, most of which are shallow simile. But they imply a larger metaphor as they settle into the mind and fade out.
(Edit: I mean, yes, they are sometimes a paragraph long sentence. But they don't require such careful parsing to understand. Now Stephenson on the other hand...)
I recently read A Farewell to Arms, and disagree with you on the Hemingway comparison. Hemingway is perhaps the clearest, easiest to read author among the 'greats' so far for me. I felt his style is pretty much the exact opposite of Gibson's.
I like his books, but I have to read them at least twice to understand what's going on. Sometimes I'll read the plot summary on Wikipedia and realize I missed a lot. I think I've read everything he's written though because I enjoy the prose even when I'm not really following along.
I'm pretty sure the stuff that confuses me was probably intended to be space for mystery. I'm not a sophisticated reader though...
