This is a guest post by the Alliance's summer student, Angela Friesen. It is reproduced from her blog, The New Is The True.

I was lucky enough to spend the past two days at the Vancouver Arts Summit (thanks to my great summer job at the Alliance for Arts and Culture). The entire thing was outstanding, but yesterday was especially so. I went to a super fantastic (super tense) panel discussion on "new media, new tools, new audiences".

I've come to be pretty disenchanted with the term new media - to my mind there is no longer any such thing; it's not something separate from the way we live our every day lives. Everything we do is through "new" media -- plus what comes next? Do we get new new media when what we have now becomes old new media? Newer media? Terminology aside, the panel discussion was fascinating, due to the range of voices. At one end of the spectrum was Jerry Wasserman, who seems to have gotten into the internet out of necessity more than excitement, and still seems a little skeptical about the whole thing, and at the other was Kris Krug, who had more than enough enthusiasm about and faith in the digital world to get most attendees really excited about the possibilities that come along with expanding your online presence.

I could really feel the tension between the two perspectives - the traditional media who don't trust the internet vs. the younger users/creators who seem to have integrated it into every part of their lives - but that tension made me feel so connected to my love for technology and media and newness, and the fact that at its core all media, new and old, is about connection and learning.