We can fantasise, but technological wizardry won't solve the problem of violence

When I was a small child I occasionally used to have a fantasy about a Universal Accountant. The occasions were invariably squabbles over equity - who had been more generous with their wine gums? Who had churlishly hoarded their Vimto while freely partaking of another's Cydrax? What was needed, I realised, was an incontestable arbiter, a divine referee who would tally every tiny, unremembered act of exchange and deliver the bottom-line - the proof that I had been insufferably wronged and that my brother should hand over some Midget Gems at once. At the time I thought God was the best equipped for this task - because of his qualities of omnipresence and divine impartiality. But it isn't essentially a religious daydream (the opposite, perhaps, given that it's a dream of crushing vindication). It is a dream of magic, of supernatural resolution to a humanly insoluble problem.

I was reminded of this by the recent public debate over the V-chip, a cheap electronic gizmo that can be programmed to exclude violent or sexual images from a domestic television. In a perfect demonstration of involuntary reflex - the fact that a sudden impact on the body politic will produce a convulsive action without conscious involvement of the brain - several people took the view that the massacre at Dunblane constituted a powerful argument for the V-chip. Among them was David Alton, the Liberal Democrat MP, who called for legislation to make its installation compulsory in all new sets. It was that old dream of magic again. "I wish, I wish, I wish we could stop children seeing these unpleasant things," thought Alton, and then the genie in the chip appeared to do his bidding. For just 60 pence, a messy, intractable human duty - that of schooling your children in the ugly ways of the world - could be waved away, as by a wand.

It wasn't the first time that technological wizardry has been called on to make problems disappear - electronic tagging had an equally childish appeal (literally, in that case, as the idea first appeared in a Spiderman comic). But it wasn't long before it became clear that the invisible prison was actually the Emperor's New Building. Nonetheless, those who support the V-chip talk of it as the perfect deal - a switch by means of which we can turn off moral corruption.

Naturally there is a catch, as in most bargains with genies. The objections to the V-chip proposal are fairly obvious. For one thing it has to be programmed to work, and it seems unlikely that the right people will bother. Smoke alarms are largely bought by middle-class, non-smoking home-owners, the sort of people who unplug the television before they go to bed and have furniture made out of non-combustible hessian; smoke alarms are not big in the spending priorities of those who like to drift off to sleep on a petro-chemical sofa with a can of Tennent's in one hand and a lighted fag in the other. On a similar principle the V-chip will be employed principally by those who don't really need it, happily ignored by those who do. There are other problems - technology is notoriously turnable, particularly by bright teenagers in search of cheap kicks without all that tedious context. Besides, who will decide what constitutes a potentially deranging image? How will the V-chip's hidden controllers discriminate between Titus Andronicus and PowerRangers? Even if you support Mr Alton's aims, it must be clear that the V-chip won't advance them by a single inch - it is not a solution, just a devout wish for one bodied forth in silicon and plastic.

The knowledge hardly cancels the allure. Even though I believe that the only way V-chips could prevent a future Dunblane would be if you dropped a skipload of them on top of the potential psychopath, I can't quite stop myself toying with its magic, as you might fantasise about what you could do if you were invisible or, even better, were given three wishes by the bag-crone you have helped across the road.

I would like a V-chip myself for various reasons. First of all I would programme it to turn the sound down whenever the adverts appeared, so that I wasn't jarred by that sneaky nudge in volume; after that I might use it to remove from documentaries all scenes in which the presenter travels down an American freeway while flicking through the local radio stations. I would do away with all appearances by Michael Howard, replacing him, as soon as technology permits, with an overlayed animation of Dick Dastardly, from whose mouth that creepy rabble rousing would emerge in perfect synchronisation. I would ensure that no drama in which the characters said "We have to talk" would ever cast its flickering light over me again. I would arrange for a tasteful blue lozenge to mask the sight of Richard Branson's lower lip whenever he appeared on screen. Wishful thinking can be quite enjoyable, you see, but it really shouldn't be mistaken for a sensible policy.