The v-chip has been hailed for several years now as the greatest of the revolutionary techno-developments of the Nineties. But while other developments in our era, from the World Wide Web to digital television, have supposedly tended to indicate more and more choice for viewers and consumers, the V-chip is all about censorship. The idea is that parents, who have control of the technology, can interfere with transmission of certain programmes. The technology consists of an electronic circuit, or V-chip, in television sets. The broadcaster of a particular programme transmits - along with the usual sound and images - a signal concerning the violent content of that programme, and parents can set their television to block programmes containing the signal.

V-chip technology raises as many questions as it answers. On the one hand, it is up to broadcasting companies who want to attract as wide an audience as possible to rate programmes in terms of violent content; how honest are they likely to be if it hurts their ratings? On the other hand, concern has been expressed by anti-censorship activists that the technology will be controlled by organisations which espouse particular value systems. The V-chip is, they suggest, a knee-jerk reaction to problems that actually arise for complex social reasons which should be addressed.

The gun interplay and other violence of Quentin Tarantino's blood-soaked Reservoir Dogs (starring Steve Buscemi on his back and Harvey Keitel standing, above) came in for plenty of criticism