“Silicon Valley’s true believers are having second thoughts,” writes John Markoff in today’s New York Times.

“If there is a religion here in the nation’s high-technology heartland, its first commandment has long been Moore’s Law, the 1965 observation by an Intel co-founder, Gordon E. Moore, that the number of transistors on a silicon chip would double annually. Dr. Moore later refined his projection, and the doubling rate has held to about every 18 months ever since, virtually dictating the pace of product obsolescence and innovation, and indeed the pace of life, in Silicon Valley.”

“Now some experts warn that Moore’s Law may soon reach its theoretical limits, with dire consequences for the technology industry’s economic engine. Yet an influential cadre of heretics is arguing that seeing an end to the slavish demands of Moore’s Law could be the best thing to happen to the culture of Silicon Valley and maybe even to the future of technological innovation that is affected by that culture.”

” ‘Forget Moore’s law, because it is unhealthy,’ Michael S. Malone, a longtime member of the valley’s technology community and an eBay founder, wrote recently in a trade publication. Forget Moore’s law, ‘because it has become our obsession,’ Mr. Malone wrote. ‘Because high tech has become fixated on it at the expense of everything else — especially business strategy.’ “

” ‘It is precisely this fixation,’ he added, ‘at the cost of other considerations like profit, product and market, that led to the dot-com bubble and bust.’ Fittingly, perhaps, Mr. Malone’s article appeared in the February issue of Red Herring, a venture capital magazine, which has since ceased publication, another victim of the technology bust.”

“Sentiments like Mr. Malone’s seem to find amplification in a new book by Po Bronson, an author who has chronicled life in Silicon Valley. His book ‘What Should I Do With My Life?,’ (Random House, 2002) explores ‘stories of people who found peace and fulfillment by giving up the frantic chase for their dream.’ “

“Several of Mr. Bronson’s case studies are about people who found the valley’s 24/7 relentlessness to be a ‘toxic environment.’ Tim Bratcher, for example, worked at Cooley Godward, one of the region’s most prestigious law firms, but hated the pressures. He left Silicon Valley for Atlanta and ultimately turned to teaching law for satisfaction.”

“In an interview, Mr. Bronson said he found that during the boom, even though many people complained about the pace of work and the way their jobs dominated their lives, they were intoxicated by the action and left only after being laid off.”

“Others, like Mr. Bratcher were burned out by a corollary to the tyrannical Moore’s Law: a pace of business that Intel’s co-founder and chairman, Andrew S. Grove, referred to as ‘Internet time’ in 1996, at the onset of the dot-com boom.”