Zook, Matthew A.

PERSONAL:

Education: Earlham College, B.A., 1989; Cornell University, M.R.P., 1995; University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D., 2001.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of Kentucky, Department of Geography, 1457 Patterson Office Tower, Lexington, KY 40506-0027. E-mail—zook@uky.edu.

CAREER:

Academic and geographer. University of Kentucky, Lexington, assistant professor, 2002-07, associate professor, 2007—. Visiting research fellow, Public Policy Institute of California, 2001-02.

MEMBER:

Association of American Geographers, Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers.

WRITINGS:

The Geography of the Internet Industry: Venture Capital, Dot-Coms, and Local Knowledge, Blackwell (Malden, MA), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals, including American Behavioral Scientist, Annals of the Association of America Geographers, Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, Berkeley Planning Journal, Environment and Planning A, Environment and Planning B, Ethics, Place, and Environment, Gender, Place and Culture, GeoForum, GeoJournal, Industrial and Corporate Change, Information Society, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Journal of Appalachian Studies, Journal of Economic Geography, Journal of Planning Education and Research, Networker, Professional Geographer, Progress in Human Geography, Southeastern Geographer, Telecommunications Policy, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, and Transactions of the Institute for British Geographers. International advisory board member for Cambridge Journal of Regions and Economy and Society.

SIDELIGHTS:

Matthew A. Zook's first book, The Geography of the Internet Industry: Venture Capital, Dot-Coms, and Local Knowledge, examines the uneven distribution of dot-com companies and the imbalance of skilled labor across countries with technology hubs like Silicon Valley in California or Route 128 in Massachusetts. Zook looks into how these regions have thrived in their unique economic and technical niche. Writing in the Geographical Review, Paul C. Adams cautioned that "the book is narrowly focused on economic development and says nothing about other issues of geographical interest, such as the mapping of Web link topology or accessibility from the Internet user's point of view." Nonetheless, Adams declared that "The Geography of the Internet Industry would be suitable for an upperdivision or graduate course in economic geography. It is written in clear and straightforward language and is easily accessible by anyone interested in the geoeconomic processes of the dot-com boom and bust. It would also add breadth to any course dealing with IT, although perhaps not at the introductory level. Arguments about the nonhomogeneity of economic development in general are well supported by the book's solid empirical grounding."

The book "distinguishes itself as an important contribution to the discipline by building on a strong foundation of economic geographical theories of tacit knowledge and regional development … as well as realigning the dot-com boom and bust alongside the behavior of venture capital firms," noted Robert Ramsey in Canadian Geographer. He concluded: "It is a short book that balances a popular writing style with sound theory and sophisticated statistical gymnastics, while maintaining an appropriately narrow scope."

Michael Batty, writing in Economic Geography, similarly assessed that "this is a remarkably good read for what is a somewhat analytical book…. I urge everyone who has a chance to read this book because it is fluent and well constructed, especially given that it is based on a thesis. Unlike most theses, the joins do not show, and this makes for an exciting journey through its pages."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Canadian Geographer, September 22, 2007, Robert Ramsey, review of The Geography of the Internet Industry: Venture Capital, Dot-Coms, and Local Knowledge, p. 406.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, January 1, 2006, R.A. Miller, review of The Geography of the Internet Industry, p. 904.

Economic Geography, October 1, 2006, Michael Batty, review of The Geography of the Internet Industry, p. 447.

Geographical Research, December 1, 2007, Michael Taylor, review of The Geography of the Internet Industry, p. 409.

Geographical Review, April 1, 2005, Paul C. Adams, review of The Geography of the Internet Industry, p. 298.

Journal of Regional Science, August 1, 2006, Willem van Winden, review of The Geography of the Internet Industry, p. 592.

ONLINE

Matthew A. Zook Home Page,http://www.zook.info (June 20, 2008).

University of Kentucky, Department of Geography Web site,http://www.uky.edu/AS/Geography/ (June 20, 2008), author profile.