I am not sure about the "different cultural backgrounds" part, at least when it comes to non Dutch traditional backgrounds (e.g. Middle Eastern immigrants)
It is specially an issue when it comes to privacy. I don't think that makes sense at all... bringing in so many devices listening and monitoring you unnecessarily
I think having the ability to focus on the things you care about the paper mostly is what would be more beneficial for all readers. You care more about an overview? You can easily find it (perhaps with graphics and walkthroughs), you care more about proofs? Then you can get them, what about code and experiments? And so on and so forth.
Readability and scalability is about making all this data available in the publication record, but easy to navigate for whoever is looking for whatever.
Great read. Taking from my field (CS), I think a lot of papers suffer from the idea that you only are supposed to show "the interface", like, what the result is, what you achieved. The "how" or the "why" are sometimes neglected, regarded merely as a "technicality" to account for the rigorous mathematical framework that "must be there".
There is little effort in making your results understandable and easy to replicate. Academia values paper production, which requires convincing peer reviewers that your results are not trivial and are worth publishing. Contrary to what the essay states, I don't think many scientists today think their research is "incremental". In fact, this word is used in many places as a derogatory term to indicate certain result doesn't contain enough novelty to deserve publication. Researchers are more incentivized to make their constructions and results as complicated and less accessible as possible.
This is not just a theory, this is something I've seen over and over throughout the years.
Wait this is far from a decent win! In such a fragmented societies as the ones from Latin America, I wouldn't be surprised if this <9% is actually part of the population that benefits from this the most