Airliners may look the same but they don't work as they did 50 years ago when the was no fly by wire in these planes, no high-bypass engines, etc.
Yes, this drastically understates the change in computing but the actual technology hasn't changed that much, it just got denser and faster.
The biggest change from then to now is probably the amount of solid state electronics onboard. That's ridden roughly the same curve as other industrial and commercial applications.