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"Applying that to the sound of a person's voice, could how we expect a male/ females voice to sound actually effect the sound they produce?"

YES. I think shock value/a level of being impressed is definitely involved. It also reminds me of Greg Pritchard, who I could only re-find on youtube by searching "britain's got talent opera boy." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUgAuj34rjo (embedding disabled)

I am not really a fan of opera, but I love this song. It sounds entirely less impressive to me (almost ridiculous) when I'm not watching the video. The video seems to be more about performing the act than the musical outcome itself--I've heard more impressive versions of Nessun Dorma. Especially in the context of something like this show? A nation-wide talent show? Everything is about performance. In this way, a man impersonating a woman can be considered more valuable than a "genuine" woman, because of his gender defiance. So clearly all the women should be men and all the men should be women because that would make everyone more impressive all around. And those in between? Stupid binary.

(See his semi-final performance--it's...kinda over the top: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeL-G4oX06Q)

"...it seems disturbing that a once solely creative human action is becoming more and more likely to be replaced with technology. Whatever happened to singing within your own range?"

On this note, I wanted to mention that people have been using technology to alter human voice for a LONG time:

Castrato/castrati singers are popularly associated with opera and catholic boys' choirs, but they've apparently been around since the Byzantine empire, says Wikipedia. Boys would be voice trained to be beautiful, incredibly singers, but then hormones completely ruined that. Puberty was considered to "break" their voices (very intense connotations there). Solution? Eunuchs! So basically... for the sake of preserving a trained voice that produced beautiful music (information?), bodies (gender) would be modified through castration (technology). I think the way that technology has changed is kind of incredible--less scarring, literally and figuratively, but not as beautiful in my opinion. Castrao made it seem as if it was so natural, rather than singers with synthetic voices.

Source: http://www.hektoeninternational.org/castrati.html