I just finished listening to Stephen Wolfram's  three-part podcast titled "The Future of AI and Civilization." If you have any interest in Artificial Intelligence and are not familiar with Wolfram's work, you should look into it. Genius polymath, creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language, the author of A New Kind of Science, and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, Wolfram is probably the smartest guy I've ever met.

The Slow Seduction

What makes his stream-of-consciousness podcast so fascinating is listening to Wolfram think out loud about where technology might take us in the years ahead. Most of his speculation takes the form of "if this-and-such a proposition is true, then it follows that the consequences will be that-and-such." For example, if it is true that we will one day be able to upload our minds into the cloud, then the civilization of the future will comprise a trillion disembodied souls in a box playing video games for eternity.