Twenty-two Years of e-Commerce

A handful of us joined with Tim Berners-Lee to start the World Wide Web Consortium at MIT in December 1994. None of us at the time saw the potential for eCommerce. Most of the focus was on techniques for formatting web pages and on various other content related issues. Jim Clark, founder of Netscape, did […]

Internet Guru’s Theory of Evolution

Thanks to Mike Maney, Founder of ManeyDigital, for posting the picture on Instagram. The picture also appears on Instagram at #johnrpatrick. Mike was Public Relations Manager for our Internet Technology group at IBM back in 2000. There was an upcoming story (below) which was to appear in the Los Angeles Times and they wanted a […]

Taking Care of The Environment

IBM research publishes an annual five year look at key trends it sees around the corner. There are many of them, but this year its report focused on related to innovations in the food supply chain – “from seed to shelf”. At a recent conference, IBM researchers made presentations about a variety of food-oriented initiatives […]

Electronic Health Records

I continue to deplore Congress for not talking about the real problem in American healthcare, the cost of delivering healthcare. Premiums and deductibles are high because the cost of healthcare delivery is high. Drug prices are in runaway price growth. When the CEO of a major drug company was asked why they keep raising prices, he said, “Because […]

My First Job: IBM 50 Years Ago

Hard for me to believe, but I finished engineering school and joined IBM 50 years ago today, June 1. I was very fortunate to have many jobs during 35 years there. Introducing the IBM ThinkPad in 1992 was special, but my job as Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for IBM’s Internet activities was definitely the […]