Pro tip: If you're writing an article on the significance of something called I/Q, it's cool to somewhere in the first couple pages say something about what I/Q is.
Thank you for the suggestion. That's the point. I/Q introduced early gets too complicated. This foundation needs to be built up.
A few hours playing with Sine and Cosine generators in GNU radio can take you from book knowledge of I/Q complex signals into fully grokking it. You don't even need a radio, just your existing audio I/O.