Business Notes: Technology

If VCRs, cable television and take-out food keep you homebound and party-shy, interactive TV may shut down your social life altogether. Last week the Federal Communications Commission paved the way for the proliferation of a technology that permits TV owners to bank, pay bills and order everything from Chinese food to tennis shoes through the boob tube. A remote-control device accesses menu screens offering up the various services.

The product of Virginia-based TV Answer Inc., interactive television transmits data via radio waves to a base station linked by satellite to the firm's headquarters. The systems will be available in 25 major cities by the end of this year. While the concept may be a boon for exhausted nine-to-fivers too weary to dial Domino's, it may be a bane for parents of the always hungry twelvesomething set.