The Geography of the Internet industry by M. A. Zook

This book is pretty interesting and easy to read, at least for the first half of it. The thesis has been very clear: geography has been playing a significant role in the development of Internet and Internet industry, which is to the contrast of the "commonly held assumptions that physical locations would become irrelevant"(p.3).

The maps, graphics, and data in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 are self-evident in showing the geography of the Internet and Internet industry. The author then goes on to interpret the phenomenon from different perspectives. Chapter 4 talks about economic clusters, knowledge management, and venture capital. Though the author puts everything pretty straightfoward, I feel that the arguments are not persuasive enough. The author successfully cited a lot of theoretical analyses, but his own arguments are submerged. Plus, when he talks about producing tacit knowledge and transferring tacit knowledge, I feel that they are pretty much the same thing. Chapter 5 is much better, because it is centered on a particular issue, rather than mix things together.