This article discusses how service technologies have the potential to impede progress rather than accelerate it. An illustrative example used is 'bereavement counselling', a service which weakened the effectiveness of family and community support in times of mourning.,,In assessing whether a service is a support or a hindrance, the basic elements to be weighed are cost, potential for counterproductive effects, the loss of communal 'local' knowledge and any 'hidden agenda' of the service. This article questions our growing reliance on professional services for support, and demonstrates how such a reliance developed not in response to need but as a by product of development.,