I first wrote about teledildonics (if you don’t know what it means, you can probably guess) for Wired magazine back in 1994. The term has been around since the 1980s, according to Wikipedia, and was coined by sociologist Ted Nelson — interestingly enough the same person who came up with the word hypertext.

The Wired story was about a scam. Expert hoaxmaster Joey Skaggs tried to pull off one of his stunts in Canada, claiming that his virtual reality sex gear was confiscated by Canadian customs en route to a trade show. Never mind that back then there were no border inspections coming into Canada. The media fell all over themselves on the story, and Skaggs scored another victory.

Skaggs and I still correspond, and I have followed his hoaxing career with interest over the years. He is working on something new right now that will be fun once it is unveiled. He has had some winners over the years. Follow the link above to his Web site for more descriptions of other classic hoaxes.

“Be careful what you hoax, it just might come true,” says Wired’s sex columnist Regina Lynn. So it has, as this story from Reuters shows that these devices are now commercially available and in use. Why don’t I ever to test these products instead of VPNs and IM software? I guess I am just not traveling in the right places. I almost got my hands on the iBuzz before I left Tom’s, but alas have yet to see the thing show up in my mailbox. One of my editors was amazed that I offered to test it out, but then, he was from UK and they drive on the wrong side of the road too.

Maybe we need a better term for teledildonics anyway. ” Actually the people making teledildonics systems — consumer-level ones, anyway — really hate the term and say it sounds creepy. They’re trying to recast it as “Internet-enabled sex toy” or “adult Internet appliance,” says Lynn. I have all sorts of things that come to mind with that latter term: perhaps a new version of IOS that satisfies in ways that routers formerly could never speak of? In any event, they are really here.