I read a great post by Kevin Kelly on the history of Moore's law that contradicts this opinion. The standards hardware engineers worked towards were based on as

I read a great post by Kevin Kelly on the history of Moore's law that contradicts this opinion. The standards hardware engineers worked towards were based on assumptions of a new transistor density, and the assumptions invariably became self predicting prophecies. Achievements of anything less than Moore's law improvement weren't acceptable! I'll dig up the link if you can't find it.