Cory Ondrejka was the CTO at LindenLab for quite some time (and if I’m not mistaken manifested as the Flying Spaghetti Monster on occasion). You can follow his current activities on his blog.
I’m sure he has given more presentations than he cares to count on the future of virtual worlds, but this little presentation he did at a USC faculty seminar is an interesting summation of the highlights of what we might expect in the near future with virtual worlds. Nothing earth-shattering here, just clear and concise and easy to absorb (note this is episode 7).
(hmm, the system doesn’t want to embed the slides)