Actually, pilots should be using ALL of those “little luminaries” together WITH ALL of what you’ve labeled “smart stuff” (presuming you mean all the instrument presentations currently available – where ever and how ever they are presented in any specific airplane) and using all of this information ALL OF THE TIME – including CAVU at high noon!
This is a dream and will probably never happen. If you have redundant information available, it is quite normal that you concentrate on the most convenient one and ignore the others. It takes a lot of training and discipline to make people use redundancies.
If you want redundant information to be noticed, it must "jump" at you. One light of a PAPI changing from white to red might indeed draw more attention, than an indicator moving constantly and slowly along a scale from the white into the red. Hence digital information (and a PAPI is nothing else, although older than the term itself) might be harder to understand when you try to monitor it, but easier to recognize if it changes.
With respect to this, the PFD shown above will draw more attention when the first 3 altimeter digits "jumps" from 400 to 399, compared to the speed tape numbers just constantly and slowly shifting vertically. If you want changes to be noticed, the indication must change in a very obvious way.
If a change in speed indication would obviously "jump" every 5 kts (or make a sound passing a round 5 kts number, different for increasing and decreasing, just like the clicking noise old fashioned electromechanical instruments made), it would be much more obvious to the pilot than a dial passing a certain position (unless that position is a very distinctive one, e.g. the 9 ´o Clock position)
An indication designed for quick and accurate reading, an indication designed to se a trend, and an indication designed to draw attention when changing must be designed differently.
So I think the first thing we must agree on is what a pilot in a highly automated aircraft should do about airspeed. Monitor it? Manage it? Track it? Notice it if it changes? Notice if it is too low? This all required different design of the instrumentation for optimum performance.