This was written 20 years ago! (Byte 7/91) And even truer now than then. We run ad hoc queries against transactional relational databases on our cellphones.
It was written when Moore's Law was in full effect. You cannot continue to expect the hardware to catch up - and certainly not in a nice predictable curve requiring no rethought of your software paradigms.
The pace at which more transistors are squeezed into the same amount of silicon has slowed down a bit, but the real difference between today and 20 years ago is that we've crossed the "good enough" threshold, and now we are optimizing other dimensions, like cost and portability. A good computer for web browsing and reading mail in 2006 is still a good computer for those tasks today. Back in the 90's, a videogame company that didn't release a new console generation after 3 or 4 years was dead; how long has it been since the Xbox360 and the PS3 were released? And nobody is clamoring for more polygons, so instead Sony is releasing a new PSP with roughly the same power as the PS3.