With more than 100,000 computers in public schools across the United States, the impact of computer assisted instruction (CAI) on students' reading behavior needs to be evaluated. In reading laboratories, CAI has been found to provide an efficient and highly motivating means of teaching specific educational objectives. Yet, while computer technology may improve students' reading skills, it cannot inspire the desire to read independently. That desire is the product of personality traits, family characteristics, and motivational factors such as teacher encouragement, campus stimulation, and the need for self-gratification. Individual initiative, thoughtful contemplation, and the power to reason things out after reading about and studying a topic are all beyond computer technology. The business of education is to turn out students with imagination, desire, and the capacity for choice. If used indiscriminately, computers may prove to foster restricted and mechanical patterns of thought. (MM)