I take a different view. Times do change, sometimes. How do you analyse horses differently from the mainstream? The horse who wins is the horse who sets or best overcomes the fastest pace of race. Different horses in today's race set or overcome (or don't) different paces of race, at different distances, on different surfaces. They are held at less odds than they should, or more than they should.
One way of determining contenders is to look at their raw running lines - just like thousands of your competitors, then make a judgement as to whether they are worthy of a deeper look, of selecting a line for them.
Here are some winners from yesterday at Gulfstream. Looking only at their raw info, do you have the skill (or even the necessary info) to know whether the horse is worthy of 'putting in the computer', of taking a deeper look? I sure don't.
If your 'racing form' came with a little tick mark suggesting a line to look at to possibly represent the horse, and a summary at the bottom - a 'consensus' pick if you will - all automated - of promising horses based on those little tick marks, and you kept a record of the profitability of such information - why would you not use it? The old racing form (and perhaps even the current one - I haven't seen one recently) didn't provide this information, so you had to work it out yourself, rather laboriously.
Modern tools provide ... modern tools. I would always counsel using your brain, but if you have a tool you can trust (according to your records), then consider using the tool, and trusting it. If you have a tool that enables it, I suggest there is no downside in putting in a line for every horse (or letting the computer do it for starters, for you to investigate further). Sure, some horses in a grey zone (such as some of the above winners, and some losers not shown) will fool you and not perform even if they have have shiny numbers, and you will lose the race. But winning at racing involves anteing up to games where there is a chance to win good money where the public often doesn't think there is, from whatever pool offers the opportunity. Participating in such games (such races) involves losing some of them, but even as in Doc's day, or 20 years ago, we must be prepared to dig deeper than the public digs.
I don't doubt than some among us have the skills to recognize some of the above horses as true contenders without velocity or energy figures. But I don't.
BTW, all the above winners ranked well enough to be bet (at the odds offered) based on automated line selection (or even manual line selection).
Ted