Back in those days you could afford to cram out every cycle in your computation. That's different nowadays. Now we mostly develop high speed because the business requires the next iteration. Both have their charm and benefits. In that sense i think the IoT is giving us back a little of what-used-to-be: low cpu, low bandwith, low memory, sometimes connected devices only this time with a low power consumption. Let's see if all that we know now makes such a big difference on those 'low end' machines, while still being pushed by a business :)

In terms of CPU power, RAM, storage and connection speeds, everything has improved radically, but sometimes I feel that the software we're running (OS, server, database etc.) is getting too bloated. Just a gut feeling though, since I'm not active in those fields. :)