Actually computer trading replaced that back in the 1980's, which was a prime suspect in the 1987 crash. It preceded HFT by almost a decade:
"Program trading", as it is commonly called, has been accused of injecting what critics call wild and unwarranted swings into the market, regardless of the economic fundamentals underlying stock prices.
This computer-assisted trading has been credited with helping feed the remarkable runup in stock values that began in 1982. But in the wake of Monday's historic 508-point plunge in the Dow Jones industrial average, the technique was being viewed as a destructive force.
"I think program trading is awful. I think that 508-point drop was caused by it," Richard Wholey, a broker-analyst at Wayne Hummer & Co., a small Chicago investment firm, said Wednesday. "There was no other reason for the markets to react the way they did."
Haskel b. Benishay, professor of managerial economics at Northwest University's Kellogg School of Management, described program trading as "a bit of a monster which makes money for a few people."
source: https://www.questia.com/newspaper/1P2-5415858/analysts-accus...
I guess we still haven't learned our lesson yet.