Matthew A. Zook, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Geography
University of Kentucky
Curriculum Vita (as of January 2008) and Email
 

My research focus can be broadly described as an interest in technological change and shifting geographies of globalization.  This interest, however, does not over-privilege the technical aspects of technological change but embedded it in larger societal systems (i.e., politics, culture, regulation, etc.) which engender innovation and in turn are changed in a mutually constitutive process.  I categorize my research into the following broad topics

• Geography of e-commerce - how the use of IT and the Internet interacts with existing systems of economic production, distribution and consumption;
• Software created spaces (code-space) - how code, space and place interacts as people use of digital technologies (particularly mobile ones) to navigate through cities.  A particularly interesting example for me is the use of GoogleMaps and GoogleEarth;
• Internet geographies - where and how does the network of networks touch places and people;
• Global air travel geographies - how do differences in history, position and power simultaneously draws some places nearer and makes others relatively more "distant" to the global economy; and
• Estonia's information society and economy - Estonia has had remarkable success in software (Skype, Kazaa) and has one of the highest uses of mobile device and WIFI use in the world.  I will be spending the 2007-2008 academic year as a Fulbright scholar researching some of the factors behind Estonia's thriving information society and economy.

Buy it at Amazon

“This book is a welcome addition to the burgeoning literature on the geography of
 the information society ... The parallels drawn to related booms and busts of earlier 
eras demonstrate that the novelty of the ‘new’ economy is as mythical as the ‘end’ 
of geography in the information age.” Eric Sheppard, University of Minnesota

“…traces the Internet industry from its beginnings … the best picture yet of the Internet 
boom of the 1990s, its decline in 2000 and 2001, and its stability and slower growth since.” 
Edward J. Malecki, The Ohio State University

“... an authoritative and engaging account of contemporary urban-regional economic 
development in the information age, that has real explanatory power much like Jean 
Gottmann’s Megalopolis had in the 1960s. The Geography of the Internet Industry deserves 
a place on the reading lists of anyone serious about understanding the recent past of 
the Internet.” Martin Dodge, University College London

This article reviews the role of knowledge in economic development and the actors through which it is created and transferred. Unpacking the often oversimplified dichotomy between tacit and explicit knowledge, the contribution of firms, communities of practice and regions to the creation of knowledge is considered. While acknowledging the importance of global knowledge flows, it is argued that regional processes of Marshallian interaction and observation retain their relevance even within the decidedly global financial and internet industries. This argument is supported empirically through an analysis of the spatial structure of the knowledge used by venture capitalists during the development of the internet industry. The ability to create and access knowledge proves key for venture capitalists throughout their work, but particularly in (1) selecting promising industries, (2) finding and evaluation firms, and (3) assisting portfolio companies.

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This talk outlines the relationship between classification, computer code and Google's mapping programs.  (i) Classification as power; (ii) From Classification to Wikification; (iii) Enter the Code; (iv) Google Code and Maps - Hybrid distance and rankings

The Internet has often been portrayed as the ultimate leveler of information where existing hierarchies of power and privilege are undermined by meritocracy. Some websites and functions are, however, more equal than others.  In particular, search engines such as Google have been a key means to construct meaning out of disorder.  This ordering (or enclosing of the Internet commons), however, comes at a cost as a location within the top ten Google search results, marks the boundary (albeit a fluid one) between the core and the periphery of the Internet.  The recent incorporation of spatial elements into the Google indexing raises fresh and geographically relevant concerns.  This paper focuses on the construction, access and use of these Google to deploy geo-referenced information in the physical environment and the way this melding of code and place affect how people interact with place.  Using the theoretical concept of DigiPlace this paper analyzes how GoogleMaps and GoogleEarth are structured and shape what appears (and what does not) in cyberspace and DigiPlace.  Of particular concern are the implications of a private corporation controlling this new space.

The recent development of web-based services that combine spatial coordinates and indexes of online material allows any web user to conduct geographically referenced Internet searches. In this paper we characterize the resulting hybrid space as DigiPlaceöthat is, the use of information ranked and mapped in cyberspace to navigate and understand physical places.We review relevant theories of hybrid combinations of physical and virtual space, how software (code) automatically produces space, and how the politics of code (particularly map generating code) shape the representation of places. The paper concludes with a case study of the DigiPlace created by GoogleMaps that utilizes the same code which powers Google's index of cyberspace. A central argument advanced by the case study concerns how the interactions between culture, code, information, and place construct DigiPlace and shade perceptions of the places that are mapped.  

This article introduces a series of measures of the geographical manifestation of a subset of unsolicited commercial email, i.e. spam, used to perpetrate ‘advanced fee fraud’. Known as ‘419 spam’, this activity has strong historic ties to Nigeria, where similar frauds were operated via physical letters and faxes during the 1970s and 1980s. This article’s analysis reveals that 419 spam operates via a globally dispersed network that nevertheless contains a clear agglomeration of activity in West Africa. Building upon theories of the intersection of cyberspace, states, and individuals, this article argues that 419 spam exemplifies the challenge offered by the Internet to the dominance of states by allowing individuals and movements to create social space that transcends borders. This process is an intriguing and ironic parallel to the description of the rise of the European nation-state as an ‘imagined community’ that challenged medieval systems of authority and existing social epistemologies. The emerging ‘networks of imagination’ developed by transnational social movements and criminal networks to define their sphere of operations present a similar challenge to the primacy of existing authority embedded in the state, particularly for states in crisis such as Nigeria. The article concludes with an examination of the off-line and online implications of 419 spam and its network of imagination for the Nigerian state and its inhabitants. Ranging from strengthening public conceptions of West Africa as a sea of corruption to a decreased ability to interact with the outside world, 419 spammers are playing an important, if illicit, role in the construction and use of Nigeria’s and the world’s Internet.

Transportation infrastructure has always played an important role in the economic fate of regions. In particular, airline networks have dramatically decreased the geographic and temporal constraints of moving people, goods and information; all of which are increasingly crucial inputs for the information economy. As a result, regions have become more concerned with both the quantity and quality of airline connections. The purpose of this paper is to examine the emerging global hierarchy of airline network connectivity. Using a proprietary database of nearly 900 airline carrier schedules from 2006, we examine regional connectivity between 4,650 worldwide origins and destinations. Through the use of network analysis and graph theoretical techniques, results indicate an increasingly complex web of nodal hierarchies in North America, Europe and Asia.

During the past decade, air passenger service in the United States has been exposed to numerous carrier bankruptcies, antitrust investigations, mergers, labor problems and a massive increase in competition. These internal elements, combined with the rising costs of fuel and the threat of terrorism combine to make a relatively uncertain air travel landscape for both passengers and operators. Moreover, these dynamics have generated significant geographical shifts in airline route structures and airports serviced by commercial carriers. These factors, combined with increasing levels of consumer access to fare and routing information, have altered the landscape of air travel accessibility in the United States. The purpose of this paper is to examine issues of consumer air travel accessibility through an analysis of three critical measures: flight segments, flight time and ticket costs. In addition, a typology of air passenger accessibility is generated for the 156 busiest commercial airports in the United States using these three measures. Results suggest significant local and regional biases in time and cost, relative to distance, for many US markets.

Questions of cost and time distance have long been of interest to geographers and have become a more central concern as globalization advances. We analyze the global air travel system by examining the differences in the costs, distances, and times of one aspect of globalization.We review the extant literature on airline transportation by geographers and others, noting especially the near-century-long interest in unraveling cost, time, and distance issues and designing innovative ways to map these interrelated variables. We expand on this base to bring recent scholarship on power and positionality of cities to our understanding of air travel. Our analysis expands on previous work on airline transport geographies in four distinct ways. First, we developed an international database for a large number of cities worldwide that includes measures of distance, cost, frequency and flight duration of airline connections. Second, this database is examined statistically through ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions to measure variations in airline volume with selected socioeconomic variables. Third, these global airline data are mapped using conventional mapping techniques, and finally, we prepare a set of ‘‘position-grams’’ or intersecting spheres of regional variation that measure and map regional patterns and variations in airline connectedness.