As we look forward to our new year, it's also a good time to look back, to remember how far we've come and how quickly we are moving into the future. That's why I chose this week's quote from What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, by Daniel Walker Howe.

We are in the midst of another transformation, not national but global, where information moves around the world at the speed of light. Yet, as Howe mentions in the beginning of his book, "Neither Alexander the Great nor Benjamin Franklin ... two thousand years later knew anything