geography of the internet industry, part 1

I'm finding Matthew Zook's Geography of the Internet Industry a refreshing change of pace from all of the highly theoretical stuff we've read about abstract "spaces of flows" etc. Sometimes I feel this visceral reaction to those abstract theories, and I wonder: how does that work in practice? What does that really mean? And then I wonder whether asking those questions means I absolutely belong in grad school, or whether I'm not built for it at all.

In particular, I find the street-by-street maps Zook includes here to be saying something important. Our cities aren't dying at all; they're simply consolidating power, and in the same old places as always. So perhaps all those "futurologists" (how would you like to put that on your business card?) are wrong in predicting that tech people would move out of the cities because they no longer needed them to do work. But Zook isn't naming the end of a trend; he's simply showing where domain names and internet industry are now (or at least, in the late '90s and early '00s). I can't see cities dying because there's just too much tangible, physical goodness about them--stuff that smart of techie people like, such as good restaurants, theater, bars, shops, other techie or smart and interesting people, etc. But what about suburbs? Those only exist as hatching grounds for city-workers' children. Really, what are the advantages of suburb life over mid-sized cities such as Madison? If workers are no longer required to commute to work, they can live where they want (provided they can get good connections, which is nontrivial) and raise their children in the relative safety of non-metropolitan areas. And if this is true, does it just mean that childless or young or older people will dwell in cities? I seem to remember hearing a story on NPR about the disappearing demographic of children in cities. But perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself here in being a futurologist myself!