In 2005, George Dyson gave a talk at the O'Reilly Media Emerging Technology Conference on John Von Neumann's work at the Institute for Advanced Study on building early computers. This talk has been a favorite of mine since it was posted to the IT Conversations website. It is informative, entertaining, and well worth listening to.
Related to the Recursive Universe post, much of Dyson's talk focuses on Von Neumann's work on cellular automata in collaboration with Stanislaw Ulam. If you liked that post then you will likely enjoy listening to Dyson's talk. The associated slides are available here (warning, they are 111MB).
