I don't get the sense that people are expecting that sort of thing, but expecting analog computers to move into what digital computers are doing in a big way, a

I don't get the sense that people are expecting that sort of thing, but expecting analog computers to move into what digital computers are doing in a big way, and I just don't see that happening. I think the people who are talking about this sort of thing wouldn't even call what you're talking about 'computing'. I'm comfortable calling it that. I'm happy to take an expansive definition. When one end of the output is analog, it makes perfect sense that you may have a stack of components that are operating in that regime. Similarly I'm sure top-end robot arms have a lot of components designed to do things that you could model in the control software as some operation, but it's easier in every way to add things like real physical dampening and such. That sure isn't going anywhere, but neither is that about to start displacing the digital portions; the symbiosis is already near optimal probably.