It's easy to find anecdotes to prove the assertion that "we rely too much on digital/computers/pocket calculators/slide rules/horses...". It's human nature to probe the boundaries of what's possible through wretched excess.

Witness the loopy idea of shackling two primitive jet fighters on the wingtips of a prop-jet bomber. A little CAT would twist the wings off that bomber like a fly in the hands of Kim Jong Eric.

There was an adjacent video from the same year about experiments with "parasitic" observation aircraft (our trusty F-84 again) being towed along under the belly of a B-36. It took only a few years to come up with the right answer, extended-range surveillance craft like the U2 and SR71. But what struck me about the video was that the technique they perfected was exactly what was needed a couple of years later to launch the X-planes from under the belly of a mother ship. A technique that was really only practical under laboratory conditions, shazaam, proved the perfect thing for test flights under laboratory conditions.

But to get to my main point, I have to counter your assertion that we choose to use digital techniques because they're cheaper and eliminate skilled labor. Sometimes that's so, but frequently digital techniques are the only way to accomplish something.

To circle around to the topic, digital fly-by-wire could have made the various mothership/carrier configurations practical, just as it makes just about every supersonic aircraft practical.

And ya know what? I'd feel safer on a highway populated exclusively by autonomous vehicles, because they will absolutely be better drivers than 99.99% of humans.

One more anecdote from personal experience: Long ago at the start of my career, I worked with early disk drives that used a slick photosensor with two glass slides that produced a fine moire pattern, that fed into digital electronics to create a positioning feedback loop capable of positioning the heads over the disk with micrometer precision. None of the mechanical components, in any conceivable configuration, assembled by the most gifted human watchmaker, could ever have come close to the necessary precision.

Some things are just not possible without the use of digital techniques.

And some things will be made worse by the application of digital techniques. But how can you predict ahead of time which will be which?