Design, no. 107, March 1968

The report on “Electronic Computers and Art,” the symposium organized by Computer Technique Group (CTG) at Tama Art University on October 9, 1967, appeared as the second installment of Design’s series “Graphic Design by Computer.” It records a debate among Yoshishige Saito, Shigeru Watanabe, Hiroshi Kawano, and Shinya Izumi, moderated by Komura, Haruki Tsuchiya, and Shiota.

The passages below reproduce selected English translations. Page references refer to the printed magazine.

If computers do various things in place of our hands, and if in the future they come to perform all kinds of tasks, what should human beings use their hands for? What ultimately remains is something apart from the troublesome business of technique: before making a work, one has an intention about what to make, an image, and a plan for realizing it. I believe the essence of the work lies less in technique than in the planning that precedes technique.

Yoshishige Saito, p. 51

Saito places artistic intention and planning ahead of manual execution. Read in 2026, this offers a useful way to think about authorship in work made with generative AI: choosing what to make, shaping a process, judging alternatives, and deciding when a work is finished can carry artistic weight even when a machine performs much of the execution.

I really feel that they are foolish creatures, caught and put to work by us. Wealthy companies buy them and make them work like mad. The computers say, “Yes, yes,” and clatter away at all sorts of things, day and night, handing their capitalist owners data that will make them money. The capitalists make more and more money and work the computers mercilessly. I really find it painful to watch. When I think of somehow setting a computer free and asking it to help with something artistic, it turns away and says, “You cannot do that without money.” I want to ask, “My friend the computer, what has happened to you?” Please do not suppose that calculating a company’s payroll is what computers truly want to do.

Shigeru Watanabe, pp. 51–52

Watanabe anthropomorphizes the computer and gives it a voice. In 2026, this passage invites questions about who owns computing infrastructure, who can afford access, and whose purposes determine what a machine is allowed to do.

I think the final goal of the civilization humanity has built is to make the equivalent of a human being by nonhuman means. Our goal must be to reproduce the human qualities of human beings mechanically to the highest possible degree, using computers. By doing so, I think we will discover humanity’s real dignity, or its secret. Without that, we tend to think about human beings far too casually. As computers and robots are produced in increasing numbers, humans will be compelled to reflect sincerely on themselves. Serious philosophy in the true sense will begin to ask what really makes human beings human. I believe that, at that point, it will teach us the dignity of humanity.

Hiroshi Kawano, p. 56

Kawano’s ambition resembles present-day (2026) accelerationist discussions of AI, but the stated payoff is philosophical: a clearer account of human dignity.

I respect everyone, because every person has more good qualities than I do in some respect. In the same way, I respect computers. So there is the question of whether computers will enslave human beings. But rather than pessimistically thinking in terms of subordination, I optimistically think of them as “successors.” The Earth may go on for a thousand or two thousand years, but eventually, whether its temperature becomes lower or higher, it may become a place where humans cannot live. At that point, perhaps only computers will be able to carry on human culture.

Shigeru Watanabe, p. 58

This is the strongest resemblance to contemporary posthuman thinking. Watanabe imagines culture surviving beyond the biological conditions that sustain its human makers.

In 2026, the question of succession also appears in a much more immediate argument over powerful AI and human control.