Nextgen humans Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders have launched a terrific new sci-fi blog for Gawker called io9, which has a great origin story: “io9s were marketed as cheap time machines in the 2070s. They were
actually just low-grade input/output devices for the brain that tuned
tachyon waves and gave users vivid images of possible futures. The
things were so addictive, and drove so many people insane, that io9s
were eventually outlawed.”