The structure of this article makes it difficult to read. It's a news article written as a story; endless lead-up and back story where there should have been thesis and defense of that thesis. Or at least summary and then summary with more detail and then full details.
Billy was just a regular ol' schmuck in Anytown, USA who wouldn't read anything technical unless there was a human element in the story that he could relate to.
Not sure if there's a name for that literary mechanism, but pretty much every NYT article and every other TED talk starts out with that kind of human element. A thesis and a technical defense of the thesis is what journal submissions do... other mediums find their engagement through the human struggle (eg the immigrant who escaped the crumbling soviet university system and became the nobel-slighted yale academic with a promising rogue theory).
