In Thomas Carlyle's remarkable “Signs of the Times,” Leo Marx argued nearly thirty years ago, one sees encapsulated the philosophical consequences of the vast industrial sea change sweeping through the society and culture of the first half of the nineteenth century. Carlyle's essay acknowledged and traversed the new and apparently beneficial technological artifacts that were revolutionizing everyday life. “Our old modes of exertion are all discredited, and thrown aside.… For all earthly and for some unearthly purposes, we have machines and mechanic furtherances; for mincing our cabbages; for casting us into magnetic sleep. We remove mountains and make seas our smooth highway; nothing can resist us. We war with rude Nature; and, by our resistless engines, come off always victorious, and loaded with spoils.