Amazon's Kindle 2 reads aloud, as Sci-Fi predicted

As Amazon begins to ship its new Kindle 2 electronic book reader, here’s an Internet article that’s worth reading: “Kindle 2 Reads Aloud, as Sci-Fi Predicted,” by Bill Christensen, posted at LiveScience.com. Focusing on the text-to-speech feature in Kindle 2, Christensen asks “How long ago did science fiction writers predict that people would prefer to have a machine read to them, rather than read the news themselves?” The answers, as provided by Christensen:

• In 1961, Polish writer Stanislaw Lem wrote about a “lecton” in his novel Return from the Stars

• In 1959, Philip K. Dick wrote about an office memo that reads itself in his short story "War Game"

• In 1934, David H. Keller wrote about a “sound-transposing machine”
in his novella "The Lost Language"

• In 1899, H.G. Wells wrote about a “babble machine” in his story
"When the Sleeper Wakes"

Read the full article for details.