It took radio about 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million. It took television about 13 years.

The Internet did it in four years.

Things change pretty fast these days. That's why I'm always surprised when I bump into people who are still reluctant to embrace social media. The criticisms run the gamut: “It's a fad,” or “It's a waste of time,” or “There's no return on investment.”

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

More than that, social media is changing the rules of the game as we speak. Talk about rate of change. We'll never communicate or collaborate in the same ways again. It's nauseatingly cliche, but it's true: Change is the new normal.

After a recent eye-opening conversation with Tom Hood (and really, all conversations with Tom are eye-opening), I'm equally intriqued by folks who refer to social media resources as “technologies.” They're not, says Tom, any more than our cars or our computers are technologies.

There’s an old saying: Once technology becomes ubiquitous, it also becomes invisible. And that’s when it becomes really powerful. We don't think about the technology that powers our car's engine when we climb behind the wheel, do we? We don't think about how the computer works when we power up in the morning. We just know that they work, and that they allow us to do really cool things.

Back when horses and buggies were the main forms of transportation, cars were advanced technology. Not anymore. And why? Because we are natives of the automobile age. We've never known a world without them. They just are.

Digital natives — the young folks who don't know what it's like to not be able to instantly connect to people and information — look at things like social media and virtual worlds in much the same way. To them, it's not about technology. It's about living life.

As we try to keep pace with the extraordinary rate of change, we need to stop focusing on the technology and start thinking about what we can accomplish with it.