Jonathan Blow (Braid and Indie Fund) recently gave an amazing presentation on the evolution of Television, and he made an interesting parallel to the evolution of games: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AxFzf...
An up and coming dev I really like is Andy Hull (from the Spelunky remake fame). He gave an amazing talk at GDC about drawing inspiration from children's toys in game design, and I see much promise in him. :)