1994, Spivack co-founded EarthWeb, one of the first Internet companies. Prior to EarthWeb, he worked in a variety of roles at several ventures including Kurzweil Computer Products and Thinking Machines. In 1999 he worked with SRI to develop their business incubator, nVention. Later he began advising startups and angel investing in his own projects through his intellectual property company, Lucid Ventures.
Spivack has co-authored several books on Internet strategy and technology and speaks and writes on the future of the Web, artificial intelligence, collective intelligence, and the Semantic Web. Spivack advises global corporations, governments, non-profits as well as a range of startups and venture funds of various stages on technology strategy. He is the author of nearly two dozen granted and pending patents in areas from interactive TV, to next-generation advertising, data-mining, artificial intelligence, e-commerce, personalization and new applications of the Web.
Spivack has a BA in Philosophy, with a focus on cognitive science and artificial intelligence, from Oberlin College and a professional degree from the International Space University, the business school for the space industry. He has done research on emergent computation and parallel computing at MIT.