The President of the Authors Guild doesn't like the new text2speech technology: when it cuts into authors' income:

[Amazon's] Kindle 2 can read books aloud....
I.B.M. has patented a computerized voice that is said to be almost indistinguishable from human ones. This voice is programmed to include “ums,” “ers” and sighs, to cough for attention, even to “shhh” when interrupted. According to Andy Aaron, of I.B.M.’s Thomas J. Watson research group speech team: “These sounds can be incredibly subtle, even unnoticeable, but have a profound psychological effect. It can be extremely reassuring to have a more attentive-sounding voice.”

We've gotten to a point where every type of communication is just an application on the computer: audio, video, text. With a little bit more time and technology we'll have books with embedded movie or voice scripts. Maybe this way writers will be able to charge more for content presented with "real" emotions, rather than the ones generated by computerized voices.