Technical debt is when you effectively borrow your future self's time and effort by taking a shortcut now that your future self has to work for to pay for it.

It is literally a debt. I dont know what the article is trying to say, it sounds to me like something my boss would say after a 2 hour meeting in a delirious caffeinated state, but thats probably just because I am not familiar with the corporate use of the term "technical debt".