I'm not sure. "Decent tech" failed because it wasn't made available on different architectures in a decent form. Then one architecture took off, and left Tex behind (DOS/Windows). There was another in an area where typesetting mattered (Mac OS X) and that one, too, did not have "Decent tech" support. Even though the open source movement probably put in way more total effort in screen readers and typesetters than Adobe ever did into Pdf ... there was never a coherent strategy, and everybody did what this article tries to advocate :
let's make one tex distro that's a bit better at screen reading. One that's a bit better at math typesetting. One that can also contain C programs, along with text. One that has graphs.
Let's all make them with zero integration and each of them only working on one distro, one platform (because that one's the best).
Despite what this article claims, nobody ever tried to do the minimum necessary to make the suggested solutions succeed. Instead, there was infighting and perfectionism in tiny details with zero care for the global picture.
This is the issue with academici. Call it "depth first" development vs "breadth first" development. If you want large scale uptake, commercials success and usefullness for many people, obviously the correct strategy is breath first : well-supported few-problems many-usecase easy-to-use kinda-basic software. Then, over a LOT of time, make it less basic.
The way to succeed in academici is to go depth first. Make the state of the art neural network for distinguishing left-handed pomeranians from mostly-left-but-sometimes-abidextrous pomeranians by 0.005% ? Guaranteed publication ! 20 followup papers ! Great hero ! Speaker invites across the globe ! Who's ever going to use it ? Let's nod politely and say "many other academici".