Matthew Zook is an American geographer and professor in the

Department of Geography, University of Kentucky The Department of Geography in the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Kentucky offers undergraduate degrees and graduate degrees and courses in physical and human geography. The department has an international reputation for the stu ...

. He studies the geography of the Internet, the GeoWeb,

economic geography Economic geography is the subfield of human geography which studies economic activity and factors affecting them. It can also be considered a subfield or method in economics. There are four branches of economic geography. There is, primary secto ...

and domain names In 2009 Matthew Zook and Mark Graham cofounded the FloatingSheep blog to understand the interactions between the GeoWeb and the offline world. In 2011 Zook cofounded the New Mappings Collaboratory at the University of Kentucky to focus on public engagement in Lexington, '

big data Though used sometimes loosely partly because of a lack of formal definition, the interpretation that seems to best describe Big data is the one associated with large body of information that we could not comprehend when used only in smaller am ...

' and user-generated Internet content, as well as the affordances of place-based thinking, analysis, and representation.

Early and personal life

Matthew Zook was born to mother Bonnie Zook and father Gordon Zook. Zook has three sisters. He graduated high school in Goshen, Indiana and later continued his education from Earlham College where he graduated in 1989. Zook continued on to his Masters education at Cornell University where he finished in 1995. August 17, 1996 he married Eva Ensmann whom he met while studying together at Cornell. Zook received Lasik eye surgery between 2007 and 2008. Zook was ordained as clergy of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in 2012.

Education

*Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley - Dept. of City and Regional Planning. 2000 *M.R.P., Cornell University (Ithaca, New York) 1995. *B.A., Earlham College (Richmond, Indiana) 1989

Research

Much of Zook's early work is on how economic factors have influenced and shaped the internet and the

ICT industry ICT may refer to: Sciences and technology * Information and communications technology * Image Constraint Token, in video processing * Immunochromatographic test, a rapid immunoassay used to detect diseases such as anthrax * In-circuit test, in ...

(Information, Communications and Technology). He discusses how the infrastructure of the ICT industry was constructed upon an existing network of Venture Capital rounded capital This research showed how despite the image of the internet being a tool of egalitarian communication and commerce, the resources of production were creating a

digital divide The digital divide is the unequal access to digital technology, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and the internet. The digital divide creates a division and inequality around access to information and resources. In the Information Age in ...

. His work as an economic geographer contributed to a greater understanding of the expansion and impact of

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

in USA. Zook also created a heat map generated from the data being collected from the

Price of Weed Price of Weed (or priceofweed.com) is a user-generated database of marijuana prices. Users may submit prices and quantities for transactions, and their location is geolocated in order to generate a price index for states and cities. While user-g ...

project, which was featured in ''

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...

''. His more recent research looks at the

GeoWeb The concept of a Geospatial Web may have first been introduced by Dr. Charles Herring in his US DoD paper, ''An Architecture of Cyberspace: Spatialization of the Internet'', 1994, U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (). Dr. Her ...

. Although the transition was gradual, what seems to have started with mapping content creation has turned into a fascination with mapping not only user generated content, but specifically geo-coded data.

Awards

* University of Kentucky Provost's Outstanding Teaching Award (2013) * Maps made by Matthew Zook In 2006, Zook provided expert testimony about the Geography of Internet Pornography in a federal court case

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

vs.

Alberto Gonzales Alberto R. Gonzales (born August 4, 1955) is an American lawyer who served as the 80th United States Attorney General, appointed in February 2005 by President George W. Bush, becoming the highest-ranking Hispanic American in executive governme ...

* In 1995 Zook won the UC Berkeley Chancellor Fellowship. * In 2007 and 2013 Matthew Zook won a Fulbright Fellowship to study in Estonia. * In 2012, Zook performed as Mother Ginger in the Lexington Ballet. His performance was noted for its grace and his facial hair. * In 2015, Zook was named the Kentucky State Geographer by Governor

Steve Beshear Steven Lynn Beshear (born September 21, 1944) is an American attorney and politician who served as the 61st governor of Kentucky from 2007 to 2015. He served in the Kentucky House of Representatives from 1974 to 1980, was the state's 44th atto ...

Publications

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zook, Matthew American geographers University of Kentucky faculty Living people Year of birth missing (living people)