By Gene J. Koprowski
UPI Technology News

Published 12/8/2004 3:20 PM
CHICAGO, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- During the late 1990s, an area called Silicon Alley emerged in New York City as an East Coast alternative to California's Silicon Valley. More recently, the Silicon Prairie emerged in Iowa as home to many Internet start-ups. As the World Wide Web continues to mature as a medium, other cities are desperately vying for dot-com businesses, offering economic incentives, building out fiber-optic infrastructure and high-speed digital subscriber lines, even in rural regions, far from metro areas, hoping to capture some of the job growth of the now-recovered industry.Sometimes, expert observers told UPI's The Web, the economic development plans, designed to attract Web companies, are quite imaginative themselves and are based on once-quixotic government projects that have emerged as prescient."Loudon County, Virginia, in 1960, was nothing but cornfields, but they built Dulles Airport there," Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, R-Ill., told business leaders at the City Club of Chicago last week. -- The Web is a weekly series by UPI covering the technological, cultural and social impact of the World Wide Web, by Gene Koprowski, who covers technology for UPI Science News. E-mail sciencemail-AT-upi.comCopyright © 2001-2004 United Press International