ABSTRACT
Computers offer both a major opportunity and a possible threat to guidance practitioners. The opportunity is that they provide a powerful resource which can potentially improve both the quality of guidance provision and its accessibility to those who need it. The threat is that they may be used to mechanise the human interaction that has been considered central to guidance practice. This is, of course, merely one illustration of a much wider social dilemma. The impact of computer technology on the workplace has caused much of the destabilisation of work structures, from which the increased demand from guidance partly stems (see Chapter 1). It is thus ironic but also appropriate that in seeking to respond to this demand, guidance services should turn to harnessing the very technologies that are its cause. The challenge for such services, as for society as a whole, is to utilise such technologies in ways which supplement and extend human potential rather than acting to restrict or replace it.
