Way back in 1982, just before TRON was about to come out, there was a concerted effort inside Disney to expand the use of computers in film and animation. Along the way Disney publicist Mike Bonifer helped produce a documentary called “Computers are people too” (an homage to the show “Kids are People Too” which was big on TV at the time). That documentary has been shared on YouTube for everyone to watch.
It’s an odd duck that film. Head on over to Vice for an interview with Bonifer and more background on the film.
Eventually, the pro-computer animation people at Disney would lose this fight and Ed Catmull and John Lasseter would found a little company that became Pixar. The rest, as they say, is history.