Silicon Alley across the metropolitan region, bolstered by the city's emergence as a global node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance, and environmental sustainability, as well as New York's position as the leading Internet hub and telecommunications center in North America, including its vicinity to several transatlantic fiber optic trunk lines, the city's intellectual capital, and its extensive outdoor wireless connectivity. The term "Silicon Alley" was derived from the long established Silicon Valley in California. It was originally centered in the Flatiron District, in the vicinity of the Flatiron Building at Fifth Avenue near Broadway and 23rd Street, straddling Midtown and Lower
CADRE Laboratory for New Media is the second oldest media lab in the United States and has a long and notable list of alumni. CADRE offers BFA and MFA degrees in Digital Media Art. CADRE has published SWITCH, an online journal of new media, since 1995. SWITCH and CADRE were early centers of the net.art movement that coincided with the Dot-com bubble in nearby Silicon Valley. The CADRE labs have historically worked closely with the ZeroOne Biennial, one of the foremost new media art exhibitions in the world. In 2006, CADRE, along with SJSU served as the academic hosts for the ISEA symposium and ZeroOne