I (programmer and team leader) get requests from the king (management and project manager) and pass them to the peasants (code monkeys), clean after their shit (QA and code review). I get peanuts in return while the king keep most of the loot.
It all depends on the project and the team. On some, you work with and along the PM and all is good, and other times you get dictated unconnected requests that you need to fight or ignore.
Lucky, my first 2 dev jobs had PMs that were right out of college business majors with zero web development experience. They were just direct unfiltered conduits between the clients and devs, but with a layer of telephone game and almost no ability to day no to the clients.
It was a fucking nightmare. By the time I did get a good PM, I was pretty much burned out and started my own consultancy (since I’d been managing a small team and doing both dev and PM’s job by then anyway).
I'd avoid magic on that one, since modern ideas about how magic works are pretty influenced by technology now. I suspect this would be gibberish to them.
How about "we have machines so complicated that it's hard to set them, and my job is to try to change the settings on them and usually fail"?
I was wondering about that too. I think they had adjustable tools in common use, but I could be wrong. They might have also used a different word when changing the depth "setting" of their horse-drawn plow, although "to set" has got to be a pretty old verb.
That would be more a like a sysadmin, though. OP has to introduce new functionality, which I'd want to emphasise.
They could say they're a creator of automata, and the past people would picture basically robots, but that implies a more physical type of building, and also that they create things that are purely decorative or for entertainment.
We got this sand and tought it to do math. I give the math sand very specific instructions to do a task. There are many people like me, and a good chunk of them are giving the sand instructions to show silly cat pictures.
I wonder if it would be better to go with sand, or a new metal, given that the average person in 1700 would know the process of smelting ore better than most of the people here. Either way they're not going to see the point without some explanation, because they'd think it's easy enough just to draw a cat yourself.
Yeah, something like "We have machines with thousands of switches that can do complicated things depending on how you set the switches. My job is flipping those switches so the machine performs the desired task as best as possible"...?
I was trying to figure out a way to describe the interface to 1700's people, given that all the machines they have require very up-close manipulation of the mechanisms to alter. My best guess is as a table covered in triggers like on a crossbow, but that reset themselves. You can tell what they're doing with a sort of scroll that comes out with stamps on it. That's still more like a 1970's dumb terminal than a laptop, but I don't want to try and describe screens or cursors before I can make sure they understand the concept that not all machines have to be mechanical, which I don't think would be clear to them automatically.
I'm guessing at that point it sounds weird and alienating to them, and they might actually think their job as a peasant seems less depressing, especially if I bring up punctuality requirements compared to the 1700's, where meetings would wait days for someone. White-collar work is better once you can understand what's happening abstractly, or at least is for me, but no hard deadlines for anything does indeed sound great. They also may have gotten winters off, depending on latitude.
Well, they did have clocks, even some early portable ones, and "automata" which were a bit like modern animatronics. Power applications like mills, too. I don't know what word would work best, though.
I'm guessing they'd picture OP running around a giant room filled with clockwork, going at things with a pry bar and wedges. That is a bit like how computers worked in their first decade, albeit electrically rather than mechanically. Later in the 18th century they invented the punchcard loom, so that would be a good point of reference, but we're all the way back in 1700.
Well, it's just how math and numbers in English work.
Cardinal numbers, the number of things you have, start with zero because you can have none of something (or less with negatives, but that's neither here nor there).
Original numbers, Numbers that show which things were in what order (first, second, etc) start at one, because you can't really have a zeroth something because then it would really be the first one.
So year 1 is 1 because it's the first year, and it starts the first century. It would have been entirely possible for English to make the names a little nicer, but given that it isn't, the math means the first set of one hundred years are the years before the one-hundredth year and cetera.
I mean, zeroth would still be zeroth; it's just based on the cardinal the moment before it arrived rather than after, assuming you start with nothing and add objects. Unfortunately that's not conventional, probably in any language, and so you get a situation where a positional notation clashes with how we want to talk about the larger divisions of it casually. This sort of thing is exactly why computer science does use zero indexing.
Relatedly, there was also no year 0; it goes straight from 1 BC to 1 AD.
To be honest you might get away with moving the term chemistry forward a couple of decades
Beginning around 1720, a rigid distinction began to be drawn for the first time between "alchemy" and "chemistry".[104][105] By the 1740s, "alchemy" was now restricted to the realm of gold making, leading to the popular belief that alchemists were charlatans, and the tradition itself nothing more than a fraud.[102][105]
My career hasn't changed much since the 1700s, I'm a winemaker.
Our company doesn't have a vineyard we buy grapes from farmers, so our winery is in the city not some villa on the hill. At first glance our warehouse full of barrels is pretty similar to an old school winery. I could show my counterpart advances we have made in automation, like our bottling line or the giant industrial press, and I bet they'd get a kick out of moving stacks of barrels or fermentation tanks with a forklift. Using food grade plastic instead of wood makes cleaning easier, and our pump is electric not hand driven, but ultimately little has changed. Our wine lab is pretty high tech and probably the main exception, I dont think they tested for things like acidity and sulfur levels until the industrial revolution.
I was literally just talking about this yesterday with my coworker. We had the bottling line out in the yard and we were sanitizing it by pumping boiling water through it with a diesel powered compressor. My contemporary may not understand sanitizing, or the equipment we used to do it, but he would easily understand the bottler and the importance of keeping it clean.
I would love to share a few bottles of modern wine with a pre industrial master and vice versa.
Medicine might sound a bit too good to be true, yeah, and this was indeed the end of the witch hunting period. Forklifts might be easier to understand, if really awesome, seeing as they had long had foot-powered cranes for really big projects like cathedrals.
Im gonna guess, is that a job where you advise a company on how to organize, store, and use "enterprise content" (im gonna guess that's like internal materials like training stuff, internal tools/software)
My job is to leverage the core competencies of my employer into win win scenarios by proactively and synergistically reengineering document based processes. I hope that clears it up.
"You know how we dug out that trench to let some of the river through for irrigation, and then we fill it in for winter? Yeah I do that, but much smaller, and much faster, on sand. Got a shovel?"
Merchants have become so powerful that I, a serf, have been taught number solely to account for every penny they make. For this, I'm allowed to live an okay life. I do it with magic (Excel) because they are so big and don't want to hire many of me. They still act like the Dutch and East India Companies, with slightly fewer atrocities.
I think my job would be understandable at a basic level. My job involves healthcare, which has massively changed since the 1700s, but the basics are still there and would likely make sense to people.
Close! But I don't have big enough brains or the paycheck to match lol. You could think of me as a glorified human butcher...far more crude than a surgeon. The pathologist gets the end result after all the blood and guts are out of the way haha. (Unless you're a forensic pathologist...they slug around in guts all day!)
Haha. Believe me I actually used to be very squeamish as a child. I still am as an adult with certain things...I nope the hell out of there for human vomit (altho it weirdly doesn't really bother me with dogs and cats).
Dunno how it went away...I guess just slowly over time as you get exposed to more and more things. Plus I work in an incredibly well ventilated space, which cuts the grossness factor of any of it down by like 95%. You'd be surprised at how much smell influences your idea of "gross", at least for me. And then if I am a bit grossed out by something, I can freely comment on it and laugh about it with my coworkers because I don't have to worry about sparing a patient's feelings...I only get the organ. I had a brief period of time in school where I had autopsy training...man I could NOT stand the smell and I almost threw up before because I tried to toughen it up and breathe through my nose. Big mistake! Idk how anyone can get used to smells like that. Mouth breathing only for me in that environment.
Anyway, my role is played by different people with different educational backgrounds depending on what country/region you're in. Here in the US, my job requires a 4 year bachelor's degree in basically any field... doesn't really matter as long as you take basic science classes. From there, you enter a specialized 2 year master's degree program. It's similar to physician assistant school except we are paid a bit less (but with the advantage of not having to see patients). Our first year is book learning and our second year is hands on training on how to perform the job.
I was always interested in medical things, but I always hated having to interact with patients. This also allows me to work with my hands and see first hand the actual effects of disease. Cancer is no longer some mysterious, nebulous concept. I can see it with my own two eyes and feel it with my hands. Plus the paycheck is pretty stellar imo...not a doctor salary or anything, but I'm living comfortable as a single adult.
If it at all seems interesting, I'd encourage you to try to investigate more. I am generally hesitant to say my exact job title in public for fear of being doxxed (it's a small field), but I'm always happy to share more with anyone over a DM.
Just wanted to say that I found the description of your job really interesting, so thanks for taking the time to write about it.
There’s absolutely no way that I could do it - I’m far too squeamish. But I’m glad that there are people who can do a job like this, which increases mankind’s understanding of diseases.
Our customers are people who work on (redacted for privacy)
We help them keep track of if their work is on schedule.
Pause to explain the Internet here.
"The Internet is complicated. But imagine you're holding a long string and I'm holding the other end. If I pull on the string, you'll feel it. We could then have an agreed upon code like one hard tug is yes, two short tugs is no. Maybe certain patterns form letters , so we can spell words out for each other. Now we can communicate from pretty far away.
Now imagine if instead of me holding the string, it's connected to a machine. Maybe that machine moves chalk over a chalkboard based on how you pull on your end of the string. I can then read this chalkboard at my leisure.
The Internet is much more complicated than that, but for my job that's close enough. It's a way to send information from here to there without anyone actually going there in person and telling someone.
My job is to work on the chalk machine. I help make sure it is set up right so it doesn't fall over, and the code stuff like 'one short tug is a, two is b, etc' is agreed on and interpreted correctly"
I’m a literal wizard. I spend hours writing in an esoteric language known only by those who study it in order to bend the world to my will and make things happen as I wish it.
The structure of my magic spells determine what the outcomes will be, and things can get really strange if you mess up the syntax.
I take food from the baker and carry it to people's homes directly in exchange for custom. We call it "being a delivery girl". The amazing part is what the baker makes, it's called "pizza"
Farmer. I operate big metal things that weigh as much as your village that sucks down every plant over an area the size of Lichtenstein, then produces enough grain to feed 1700s England for a decade.
I steer gigantic metal birds pulled by armies of horses carrying dozens of people, to the antipodes... in less than one day... using dead animal juice.
I'm a lot like a guard. But, it's now much easier and more profitable for the criminals to steal or hold for ransom information. So, instead of guarding a warehouse or office, I guard that information.
I tell employers how to prevent their workers from getting killed, and of they don't listen, I tell the government to make sure the employer can't work like that.
These days, I'm a residential carpenter in New England - I'd imagine it would be very easy to talk about my trade to people from the 1700s, and I'm sure the builders of that time would be fascinated by the power tools we have now.
I can barely get my wife to understand virtualization/containerization and she’s very intelligent, let alone someone from the 18th century who couldn’t even comprehend what a computer was.
This likely has more to do with my shitty explaining ability than anything else. 😊
I'm a programmer. I think I would explain it as creating and operating mechanical contraptions that help students find books to read and help them write new works and send them to professors. I work at a university and that is basically what our program does.
They had accountants in the 1700s. The principles of double entry bookkeeping remain the same, but the technology difference with computers and accounting software would make the day to day work unrecognizable.
I'm always suspicious of these sorts of posts. Feels like the answers could be used to profile the users who reply. Maybe the internet has made me way too paranoid.
I'm a barista, coffee houses were a relatively new thing in 1700. People from the Middle East and East Africa would probably understand "I make coffee", and maybe some very trendy Europeans as well (Wikipedia says the first coffee house in Europe opened in 1645 in Austria.)
If they weren't familiar with coffee, I'd say I make a beverage with the opposite properties of beer. It's hot and perks you up where beer is cold and dulls your senses.
(Random thought: how did beer refrigeration work pre-industrial revolution? Were our ancestors chugging lukewarm beer?)
Ever hear of the giant insurance company, Lloyd's of London. It started as a coffee house.
Back in the day, many people used coffee houses as their business office. Houses and streets were unmarked, and inviting a stranger to your home could be problematic. Meeting and making a deal at the coffee house was safer and simpler. Without a central post office, it was a lot easier to send a letter to 'John Doe care of Lloyd's' than to expect it to find your house.
Pretty soon, folks got the idea of setting up companies to invest in ships to the New World. If one guy invested all his money in one ship, there was a reasonable chance that it would sink. If he got together with nine other people they could send out ten ships, and if only two made it back they'd still read a profit.
Look on Youtube for an old BBC series 'Connections."
It's the history of science, showing how one change can cascade through time. To continue the story; the new insurance companies wanted their ships to survive. They studied the matter and figured out that pine tar was the best way to stop leaks. There were plenty of pine trees in the New World, so they contracted some Americans to make pine tar, promising to buy all they could deliver. The process had other byproducts, and eventually drinking coffee led to the creation of the chemical industry.
I visited a brewery in Germany that was mined out of the bottom of a volcano. It was pretty fucking chilly underground there even in the dead of summer, so maybe that's where they kept it?
Idk, I showed up to the wrong tour and I only know like 3 words in German so I had zero idea what was happening 98% of the time.
From my very small knowledge, yes, beer was consumed at room temperature. In Germany it still is, for example. Also, beer had less alcohol and was much more like bread in that it was nutritious and filling than what we have now.
My work is similar to that of a librarian, except the library I work with is invisible and can contain more books and scrolls than any normal library ever could.
My invisible library has information about all kinds of things, the weather, the money earned and spend, and other things that are important for merchants, scholars and leaders to know.
It is my job to make sure the information arrives and is stored properly in this library. Also I have to make it easy for others to find and retrieve the information they need from this library.
I fix giant metal birds that light themselves on fire and scream really loud to fly across the sky. The kingdom heavily regulates who fixes them, how they fix them, and who flies them to make sure everyone is safe.
I mean, yeah. The theater goes back to at least Ancient Greece. So they’d know what I’m talking about, even if the job duties have shifted slightly throughout the centuries.
Back in the 1700s this wasn't really a thing. Although there were folk, usually educated people like vicars and wealthy land owners, who called themselves 'antiquarians'.
This mostly involved them employing the local unemployed to hack away at old burial mounds/tombs looking for treasure. Buggering up the archaeology for us future scientists in the process!
Imagine an abacus. Now imagine that abacus to be very large, as large as the side of a building, with hundreds of rows, each row with 256 possible arrangements.
Now imagine making different arrangements of the rows in that abacus, such that they are directions on how to change the arrangements of other rows in that same abacus. Further, suppose that this abacus can follow a series of these directions itself, without a person needing to do it.
What I do is to write a series of these instructions in order to accomplish specific tasks on the rest of the abacus. Adding numbers together, search through rows to find specific numbers, copying them. Numbers might represent points on a map, accounts in a business, words in a book, even colors in a picture, like you might find in a tapestry.
But then imagine this abacus is the size of a whole city - that's the number of rows it has. But its elements are so small that the whole of it can fit in your pocket. And it uses the same energy to accomplish its tasks that is found in a bolt of lightning, but in very small amounts.
I feel like they'd lose you in the second paragraph, unless maybe you were talking to an especially bright academic. Not because they don't get the concept, but because they don't get how that would help anything, living in a world where you make most of your own stuff manually.
Also, energy wouldn't be spoken about for another century after this, so you'll need to try again with electricity. The OG physics guys like Newton were still alive, and knew it as vis viva, but nobody else would really know what that meant.
I am an expert in crops. I have traveled the globe to learn about them. I have created new varieties to plant. Landowners around the globe seek me out for knowledge and seeds.
We made an automaton clerk. It has neither arms nor body, but it works all day translating physician's documents, so they may be stored with uniformity in a library that has neither shelves nor paper.
To be doubly clear, if you want to use a special character literally instead of figuratively, you can add a \. That's an escape character. This includes \ itself, which if you look at the source on this comment you can see I'm typing twice.
Another example: *not italicised*, which I write \*not italicised\*, so it doesn't just come out not italicised.
I try to predict the future in order to find a way for us to invest the money universities have given us that ensures we can pay scholars a modest wage once they're too old to work. The goal is to not run out of money before the last scholar dies.
I'm a stochastic Asset Liability Modelling specialist in the financial and investment risk function of the asset management company of a pension plan for the university sector.
Stock markets and securities had already existed in various forms for centuries, but pensions and insurance are really more of 19th century phenomenon, as are probabilistic views of the world (closely related). Stochastic analysis is a 20th century beast, and multidimensional non-linear optimisation in financial mathematics is a relatively recent 21st century development!
The very broad strokes of it? Sure. The specific nature of it? Absolutely not. I'm in a fairly specialized branch of printing, and while I understand the basic principles, I couldn't explain, for instance, why it is that the printable CMYK gamut is so much smaller than the sRGB gamut, which is in turn far smaller than the visible color gamut. Nor could I explain why certain formulations of ink don't produce linear colors, and why inks for different processes tend to broadly be more or less linear.
You could actually do better, I think. You drive a carriage for hire, but It's equipped with something like a (fire powered) water wheel so it doesn't need horses.
Edit: It also might be of interest to them that ordinary people can afford your services. In their time schmucks walked.
In my time, we’ve covered much of the world in a mesh of fine glass wires. We shine light through them to communicate over long distances. I edit the texts in the light emitting boxes to tell the light where to go.
I’m also largely responsible for cleaning up other people’s messes, like the day shift techs who generate shitty MOPs with a shitty tool that they don’t know is doing stuff wrong because they’ve never actually run a command in a Cisco, Juniper, Alcatel, Overture, etc. in their life and now I’m just ranting and rambling…
I'm a teacher. They would understand that I educate the young, but would be nowhere close to understanding my students. They would think I teach a few children of the wealthy when I actually teach hundreds from the poorest of families in my area. Including several imigrants who speak a different language and many students with various disabilities.
I do building maintenance. I might have to explain wiring and electrical to them. But plumbing has been around since roman times, so I think they would get it.
So basically we have these extremely powerful but terribly stupid machines that can basically do anything as long as you know how to talk to them and tell them exactly how to do what you want them to do. I'm that guy who talks to these machines and make them do what people want.
"I write spells, but they work with technology, not magic. We have very advanced printing presses that are able to just to print words, but also do mathematics at an amazing pace and reproduce the printed word nearly instantaneously across oceans."
Hehe. On weekdays I go to a building that is owned by a company. I sit down on a chair at a desk, stare into a device and sometimes push some of the 105 buttons on it. Sometimes I also fill out forms on paper. After 8h plus break I leave and go home. In return the company advises my bank to increase a number each month.
We have really advanced technology, so few people have to work in agriculture or as handymen and theoretically it's enough to feed us all. The rest of us keeps busy by shuffling paper around. And in recent times we were able to do away with some of the paper and replace it with those machines. There are some slightly different variants, but they pretty much all look the same.
I'm a glorified locksmith for magic wiz boxes. Technically I do other things as well, but mostly it's just getting past the locks that people have lost the key for.
There are also magical entities that take works from the nether realm and bring them into existence here, only they are all powered by grumpy demons and so I don't deal with those.
My job is to digitize cassette tapes, VHS tapes, and other magnetic media.
So first I'd have to explain the miracle of how we managed to capture moving images and sounds onto these thin strips of plastic covered in rust. I'd follow that up by explaining how that technology is now considered quaint and out of date, and that these days we just get a thinking machine to remember that sort of thing for us.
Is your dad actually your dad, or is he your brother? Well my job uses your blood to find out these questions and more. We mix your blood with glowing ingredients, and compare the illuminated patterns that we see when we shine light on it with those of your family members, as well as compared to a rough reference mishmash of all blood we've collected so far.
We mix your blood with glowing ingredients, and compare the illuminated patterns that we see when we shine light on it with those of your family members
They probably wouldn't understand what a software engineer is. I would explain to them that we have mechanical devices that are so complex that humans have to write instructions on how it behaves. That's probably not enough, but would be enough for them to ask clarifying questions.
I am a computational chemist so... Not sure how you would translate that so that someone from the 1700s would understand but whatever it is would get me burned as a witch.
Sure lol. I harness the power of the sun and lightning to make special stones that other people can command it to make it work for them.
Basically creating a golem haha.
1700 is basically medieval. The differences are things most people couldn't spot, like potatoes and puffy clothing vs. tight. They were even still using plate armour and pikes, although it wasn't long for the world.
Edit: To be clear, I am aware that's 2.5 centuries after the medieval is usually demarcated as ending. Besides seafaring not a lot was fundamentally new, though.
But also still castles. It's true, people might divide them up now, but I'm not sure how uniformly or accurately.
You gave events over two centuries as an example, but if I was dividing the world up by associations, DEIC goes in with Shakespeare and Columbus, but Le Mis goes in with beam steam engines and sawtooth-roof factories in a later era. That's just me though, obviously it changed continuously in reality.
I guess what I'm asking is, how would medieval be different when it comes to this question? They're still going to understand trade and politics fine, but not most things machine or industry-related.
Edit: Even if I was explaining stuff to a guy like Ea-Nasir from the deep bronze age, I'd mainly have to adjust for metal being less common in their era. A lot of everyday life would be familiar to people from 1700AD.
The medieval period to me would be like in Game of Thrones or DnD settings, where automation tech was still hydraulic based at best, and medical knowledge was still very very limited.
1700s had steam engines and electricity, and apparently lithography was invented in the 1790s, so that's a big difference.
Yeah, but we're in 1700, as in a year after 1699. They had the word "electricity", and it referred to the tendency of feathers to stick to stuff. The first static electricity generator is recorded in 1705. Thomas Savery's practical steam engine was patented in 1698, but probably wasn't being used in actual mines as of 1700. The first impractical ones were recorded in classical antiquity, however. All the experiments and applications you're thinking of were from much later that century.
That's actually kind of a nitpick, though. They have a chance to know more than a person from 1500AD, 1200AD, or 1700BC. The point is that all of them still know basically nothing. You're not going to gain good analogies and comparisons until deep into industrialisation, and even then some things like computers will be tricky. Late life Ben Franklin would be somewhere in between, but it's my personal guess him being Ben Franklin would be more helpful than his prior knowledge of the concept of conservation of mass.
We have devised methods to allow performers, both thespian and musician, to be heard and seen by larger and larger audiences. These audiences can be several thousand. Imagine if an entire city came out to see the performance.
I am one of the individuals responsible for maintaining and operating those tools.
A machine that draws pictures/writes stories. In a way, it's easier than the more abstract computer related jobs, because its output it, on a high level, similar to that of a human.
there's these things called electrons that are moved when you move a magnet relative to a conductor material, such as copper, these electrons have more power than steam. Switches are signal devices, like valves in a steam engine. We used to use them, for instance, to make a signal pass or not pass. These switches have, over the years, been manufactured to an astounding billions per square inch, they are all called transistors and have no moving parts. Four equations will be sufficient to describe the situation.
I make a long list of things for people to do in order to create a final outcome, and then keep track of the progress and find solutions for deviations.
Project manager.
They never really called it that, but I'm pretty sure the concept isn't new. Architects and the likes did pretty much the same when building ginormous structures back in ancient Rome and Egypt, so they'd get the idea. Probably wouldn't understand the project deliverable, but at least the process.
I make machines talk to each other so that people can talk to each other through the machines from really far away. Like, you know that brand new thing called the telegraph? Well now we call those optical telegraphs because ours are made of pieces of lightning called electricity, and I work on even better versions of that. You can talk to anyone you know instantly with the machines I work on, no matter where in the world they are.
Optical telegraphs, also called semaphores, were invented in 1684, and first experimented in 1767. The most popular system was invented in 1792. There are a lot of hills around the US and Europe named “Telegraph Hill” because they used to be where an optical telegraph station was set up.
You’re thinking of the electric telegraph, which was indeed invented in 1837, and very quickly supplanted optical telegraphs. We now use the term telegraph almost exclusively to describe the electric telegraph, but someone from the 1700s wouldn’t know that.
I put roofs on, both slate and standing seam. They would probably be surprised at how much money the really rich people have. But explaining standing seam would be pretty easy.
We even get our copper from Revere, as in Paul Revere, though he wasn't born until 1735.
Peasants and commoners understood exactly how much money the rich have - they have almost all of it. One look at a billionaire's mansion and they'd confirm that yep, that's a palace for a sultan or prince alright.
Yeah, maybe I'm the one who hasn't gotten over it. Some days it's the worst part of going to work (the other days it's usually the weather that's the worst part)
Someone else makes a complicated tools for teeth doctors to record what they do and helps them keep track of how much money they are owed.
I teach people to use that tool, and fix it when it breaks. Usually both because I'll try to explain how to do something and realize it's broken half way through
I create drawings of the enclosure of machines and contraptions, you know, the knobs and switches and all those things, and then instruct machines to assemble those machines according to the drawings.
I make energy (a word describing the measure of the invisible magic which makes sea waves happen, the sensation of warmth of the sun on your skin, and the effort you put into lifting heavy rocks) move around really, really, really fast, and lots and lots of it too.
Controlling this 'energy' is a difficult task because if you give it even a little chance, 'energy' will escape in the easiest, most useless way possible. Half my job is planning how to prevent energy from escaping without doing something useful first.
I work for a training department for a large financial institution. I think I could explain it as teaching people how to do their job better. Though I don't actually do much teaching, personally.
They'd understand perfectly. When my employers buy something, it's my job to check that it arrives in good order and matches what we asked for, and then arrange for the sender to be paid.
Sometimes the thing is a piece of equipment for transmitting real-time video of tumours from one part of the country to another, but I don't think we need to go into that.
My official work title is "Site Reliability Engineer", which means I'm somewhere between a clerk, a tinkerer, and a millwright.
But I'm not recording any transactions by hand and the mills I work on don't have anything to do with grain. Instead, they're simple but very fast arithmetical machines that the moneychangers had built to account for every penny that moves from one bank to another.
Sometimes the machines don't work as they are expected to, and it's my job to catch this misbehavior and identify the cause so that one of the arithmetical millwrights can figure out how to fix it. I also help them them do the fixing and testing to make sure the equiment runs true before we set it back to work.
I solve problems related to how lightning rocks talk to each other. Often there's an issue with how automatic scribes decide they don't feel like talking. Some days I must travel more than double the speed of your fastest horse using a metal box with wheels. I will often complain when my metal box picks the wrong music to play.
I think so? Libraries certainly existed, so there's that. Workshops existed, even if they were less industrialized/more artisanal. The only novelty might be that the two should be in the same place.
Then again, libraries of old apparently were used for a lot more than just books/scrolls, and trade guilds must have needed written materials often enough... Maybe the modern makerspace is a reinvention of an old concept? I have no idea.
I wonder how weird they would find: I work for one company. Other companies pay that company for me and my coworkers to do work for them. I may be moved to different companies to do similar type of work at each company.
If it's not a one line reply with a designation and a linkedin description, but a conversation over drinks, they'd get everything we explain to them. I presume it's a smart person. There are many people in today's time who won't get it in a one liner.
Yes. We do it using computers now, so a lot of what I do is more database management but the basic method we use for accounting has been around since before the year of our lord 1300. All the stuff we do is just to make it possible to do at scale.
I work in a trade school and apprenticeship has been around for ages so I think it would translate. I would just say that I help teach apprentices along with their masters, specifically about boats and ships.
I do qa for headsets so uh... Imagine a painting that moves. Now imagine instead of seeing the world, there was a device that makes you only see those moving paintings. I make sure that device and the paintings work well together.
If anyone knows of any kind of animation technique from that era that would help with the description. But even flip books wouldn't be invented for like 150 more years so 🤷♀️ Maybe I could find a nice painting and give the person a bunch of mushrooms and be like "this but different"
I mean, they know what movement is and what real things look like when they move. I sure you could explain the concept of things on a screen moving to them.
I spend most of the day in a room looking at humorous public announcements from people all over the world until someone breaks the communication system for the organization and exile criminals and bad actors
Doug Stanhope, the comedian has a good bit about the mexicans taking your job, then you must not have skills! Learn by pantomime:
"Crank Crank?" "Si! Crank Crank" https://youtu.be/FOt03BNPExo?t=2220
Yes. I'd just say "you know how the Courts have the power to do X, and decide Y? Well the government decided to devolve those powers to an independent office, so that people didn't have to pay for lawyers and deal with complicated legal processes. I work in that office making the Y decisions."
yeah because I have a real job (retail) not whispering to the lightning through the haunted frame like yall
Damn apparently you're a poet too
Working in a shop is a skill as old as civilization.
I (programmer and team leader) get requests from the king (management and project manager) and pass them to the peasants (code monkeys), clean after their shit (QA and code review). I get peanuts in return while the king keep most of the loot.
Bob: “why can’t the king just ask the peasants directly?”
I'M A PEOPLE PERSON!!!
I’M A PEASANT PERSON, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU NOBLES, WHY CAN’T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT
The project manager is your peer, not your king.
It all depends on the project and the team. On some, you work with and along the PM and all is good, and other times you get dictated unconnected requests that you need to fight or ignore.
Thankfully I've only ever worked in the first environment.
Lucky, my first 2 dev jobs had PMs that were right out of college business majors with zero web development experience. They were just direct unfiltered conduits between the clients and devs, but with a layer of telephone game and almost no ability to day no to the clients.
It was a fucking nightmare. By the time I did get a good PM, I was pretty much burned out and started my own consultancy (since I’d been managing a small team and doing both dev and PM’s job by then anyway).
Ah, so you're the
grand viziercourt jester.That definitely define my everyday job experience.
Well, at least this part hasn't changed.
I'd avoid magic on that one, since modern ideas about how magic works are pretty influenced by technology now. I suspect this would be gibberish to them.
How about "we have machines so complicated that it's hard to set them, and my job is to try to change the settings on them and usually fail"?
Not sure if the concept of "settings" would be something they can relate to.
I was wondering about that too. I think they had adjustable tools in common use, but I could be wrong. They might have also used a different word when changing the depth "setting" of their horse-drawn plow, although "to set" has got to be a pretty old verb.
Even better: "our clocks in the future are very complex and it's my job to keep them working".
That would be more a like a sysadmin, though. OP has to introduce new functionality, which I'd want to emphasise.
They could say they're a creator of automata, and the past people would picture basically robots, but that implies a more physical type of building, and also that they create things that are purely decorative or for entertainment.
We got this sand and tought it to do math. I give the math sand very specific instructions to do a task. There are many people like me, and a good chunk of them are giving the sand instructions to show silly cat pictures.
I wonder if it would be better to go with sand, or a new metal, given that the average person in 1700 would know the process of smelting ore better than most of the people here. Either way they're not going to see the point without some explanation, because they'd think it's easy enough just to draw a cat yourself.
Yeah, something like "We have machines with thousands of switches that can do complicated things depending on how you set the switches. My job is flipping those switches so the machine performs the desired task as best as possible"...?
"what is this 'switch' of which thou speakest?"
A lever that influenced the workings of the machine, sir.
I was trying to figure out a way to describe the interface to 1700's people, given that all the machines they have require very up-close manipulation of the mechanisms to alter. My best guess is as a table covered in triggers like on a crossbow, but that reset themselves. You can tell what they're doing with a sort of scroll that comes out with stamps on it. That's still more like a 1970's dumb terminal than a laptop, but I don't want to try and describe screens or cursors before I can make sure they understand the concept that not all machines have to be mechanical, which I don't think would be clear to them automatically.
I'm guessing at that point it sounds weird and alienating to them, and they might actually think their job as a peasant seems less depressing, especially if I bring up punctuality requirements compared to the 1700's, where meetings would wait days for someone. White-collar work is better once you can understand what's happening abstractly, or at least is for me, but no hard deadlines for anything does indeed sound great. They also may have gotten winters off, depending on latitude.
I'd go by 'mechanical devices', there were hardly any machines in our understanding back then.
Well, they did have clocks, even some early portable ones, and "automata" which were a bit like modern animatronics. Power applications like mills, too. I don't know what word would work best, though.
I'm guessing they'd picture OP running around a giant room filled with clockwork, going at things with a pry bar and wedges. That is a bit like how computers worked in their first decade, albeit electrically rather than mechanically. Later in the 18th century they invented the punchcard loom, so that would be a good point of reference, but we're all the way back in 1700.
Worth noting that the 1700s are, in fact, the 18th century. The first century was the years from 1-100, the second century from 101-200, etc.
But, yes. It was invented later in the 18th century than our audience came from.
Also a good point. It's dumb that we've zero-indexed centuries and then given them one-indexed names, but that is the standard.
Well, it's just how math and numbers in English work.
Cardinal numbers, the number of things you have, start with zero because you can have none of something (or less with negatives, but that's neither here nor there).
Original numbers, Numbers that show which things were in what order (first, second, etc) start at one, because you can't really have a zeroth something because then it would really be the first one.
So year 1 is 1 because it's the first year, and it starts the first century. It would have been entirely possible for English to make the names a little nicer, but given that it isn't, the math means the first set of one hundred years are the years before the one-hundredth year and cetera.
I mean, zeroth would still be zeroth; it's just based on the cardinal the moment before it arrived rather than after, assuming you start with nothing and add objects. Unfortunately that's not conventional, probably in any language, and so you get a situation where a positional notation clashes with how we want to talk about the larger divisions of it casually. This sort of thing is exactly why computer science does use zero indexing.
Relatedly, there was also no year 0; it goes straight from 1 BC to 1 AD.
It is a thinking engine. No further questions.
Folks in 1700 understood what an engineer was. I'd just tell them I design really complicated looms.
Can you get it to draw bewbs? Asking for a friend
That's the point they burn you at the stake for being a witch.
Well, if they weigh the same as a duck
I'm a chemist, so I'd just tell them that I'm an alchemist.
Ooh, good idea. I'm an alprogrammer. Or is it alware algineer?
So close, yet so very wrong.
Apothecary might be better.
To be honest you might get away with moving the term chemistry forward a couple of decades
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy
My career hasn't changed much since the 1700s, I'm a winemaker. Our company doesn't have a vineyard we buy grapes from farmers, so our winery is in the city not some villa on the hill. At first glance our warehouse full of barrels is pretty similar to an old school winery. I could show my counterpart advances we have made in automation, like our bottling line or the giant industrial press, and I bet they'd get a kick out of moving stacks of barrels or fermentation tanks with a forklift. Using food grade plastic instead of wood makes cleaning easier, and our pump is electric not hand driven, but ultimately little has changed. Our wine lab is pretty high tech and probably the main exception, I dont think they tested for things like acidity and sulfur levels until the industrial revolution. I was literally just talking about this yesterday with my coworker. We had the bottling line out in the yard and we were sanitizing it by pumping boiling water through it with a diesel powered compressor. My contemporary may not understand sanitizing, or the equipment we used to do it, but he would easily understand the bottler and the importance of keeping it clean. I would love to share a few bottles of modern wine with a pre industrial master and vice versa.
Yeah, that would be really impressive!
"What are you going to tell me next, you have a one-time cure for consumption?"
That's witchcraft you're talking about! Burn them! 😁
Medicine might sound a bit too good to be true, yeah, and this was indeed the end of the witch hunting period. Forklifts might be easier to understand, if really awesome, seeing as they had long had foot-powered cranes for really big projects like cathedrals.
Few people from 2024 understand what I do, so no.
What do you do?
I'm an in-house consultant for Enterprise Content Management.
Sounds IT-related. Can you fix my printer?
Best I can do is strangle you with a USB cable.
Nice. This is my new go-to answer for that question.
I'm sure your granny will be thrilled.
If it means I never have to deal with printers again, I'll take it.
Can you do 2pm, next Tuesday?
I'm down. The safe word is 'wenches'.
Have you been stalking me?
Use a micro or mini-b.
LOL me likey
Please tell me it's not Opentext...
Fortunately not. I haven't quite descended to the seventh circle of hell yet.
Exceed is still the only program that handles graphically intense Unix X11 sessions properly for Windows machines. It's still not great though.
Some of us still have to slog through old CAD applications that have long been abandoned.
Im gonna guess, is that a job where you advise a company on how to organize, store, and use "enterprise content" (im gonna guess that's like internal materials like training stuff, internal tools/software)
Not totally wrong.
I'm thinking of the episode of That '70s Show where Kelso's dad is trying to explain to Kelso what he does for a homework assignment.
And then it keeps going on the like for a while.
Yeah, that's pretty much how it goes for me.
Huh. Somehow I understand even less what you do than before I read that.
My job is to leverage the core competencies of my employer into win win scenarios by proactively and synergistically reengineering document based processes. I hope that clears it up.
If someone working in semiconductor manufacturing were to answer this question they would probably have to say "I make sand think" and just walk away.
"You know how we dug out that trench to let some of the river through for irrigation, and then we fill it in for winter? Yeah I do that, but much smaller, and much faster, on sand. Got a shovel?"
Not much different than weirder than meat thinking.
For the uninitiated: https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html
Merchants have become so powerful that I, a serf, have been taught number solely to account for every penny they make. For this, I'm allowed to live an okay life. I do it with magic (Excel) because they are so big and don't want to hire many of me. They still act like the Dutch and East India Companies, with slightly fewer atrocities.
i'm teaching silicon rocks how to think
I barely try to explain my job to people today, particularly family.
I think my job would be understandable at a basic level. My job involves healthcare, which has massively changed since the 1700s, but the basics are still there and would likely make sense to people.
I look at organs to find and document disease.
A witch!
Let's toss them in a lake! If they die they weren't a witch! If they don't... We then know they are a witch!
Either way... Huzzah!
We have found a witch, may we burn her?
Ah, a barber!
"So how do you guys get used to tasting piss so often?"
Anatomical pathologist
Close! But I don't have big enough brains or the paycheck to match lol. You could think of me as a glorified human butcher...far more crude than a surgeon. The pathologist gets the end result after all the blood and guts are out of the way haha. (Unless you're a forensic pathologist...they slug around in guts all day!)
How do you get into that line of work??? Not because I want to, just morbid curiosity. I'm too squeamish.
Haha. Believe me I actually used to be very squeamish as a child. I still am as an adult with certain things...I nope the hell out of there for human vomit (altho it weirdly doesn't really bother me with dogs and cats).
Dunno how it went away...I guess just slowly over time as you get exposed to more and more things. Plus I work in an incredibly well ventilated space, which cuts the grossness factor of any of it down by like 95%. You'd be surprised at how much smell influences your idea of "gross", at least for me. And then if I am a bit grossed out by something, I can freely comment on it and laugh about it with my coworkers because I don't have to worry about sparing a patient's feelings...I only get the organ. I had a brief period of time in school where I had autopsy training...man I could NOT stand the smell and I almost threw up before because I tried to toughen it up and breathe through my nose. Big mistake! Idk how anyone can get used to smells like that. Mouth breathing only for me in that environment.
Anyway, my role is played by different people with different educational backgrounds depending on what country/region you're in. Here in the US, my job requires a 4 year bachelor's degree in basically any field... doesn't really matter as long as you take basic science classes. From there, you enter a specialized 2 year master's degree program. It's similar to physician assistant school except we are paid a bit less (but with the advantage of not having to see patients). Our first year is book learning and our second year is hands on training on how to perform the job.
I was always interested in medical things, but I always hated having to interact with patients. This also allows me to work with my hands and see first hand the actual effects of disease. Cancer is no longer some mysterious, nebulous concept. I can see it with my own two eyes and feel it with my hands. Plus the paycheck is pretty stellar imo...not a doctor salary or anything, but I'm living comfortable as a single adult.
If it at all seems interesting, I'd encourage you to try to investigate more. I am generally hesitant to say my exact job title in public for fear of being doxxed (it's a small field), but I'm always happy to share more with anyone over a DM.
Just wanted to say that I found the description of your job really interesting, so thanks for taking the time to write about it.
There’s absolutely no way that I could do it - I’m far too squeamish. But I’m glad that there are people who can do a job like this, which increases mankind’s understanding of diseases.
Hey thanks haha
That was super fascinating! Thank you so much for taking the time to explain!
I’m a peasant just like you.
Our customers are people who work on (redacted for privacy)
We help them keep track of if their work is on schedule.
Pause to explain the Internet here.
"The Internet is complicated. But imagine you're holding a long string and I'm holding the other end. If I pull on the string, you'll feel it. We could then have an agreed upon code like one hard tug is yes, two short tugs is no. Maybe certain patterns form letters , so we can spell words out for each other. Now we can communicate from pretty far away.
Now imagine if instead of me holding the string, it's connected to a machine. Maybe that machine moves chalk over a chalkboard based on how you pull on your end of the string. I can then read this chalkboard at my leisure.
The Internet is much more complicated than that, but for my job that's close enough. It's a way to send information from here to there without anyone actually going there in person and telling someone.
My job is to work on the chalk machine. I help make sure it is set up right so it doesn't fall over, and the code stuff like 'one short tug is a, two is b, etc' is agreed on and interpreted correctly"
Backend developer.
Great analogy!
As a programmer, I'd just tell them "I configure contraptions to perform tasks for people"
Magic. Got it.
"Some other guys figured out how to trick rocks into doing stuff by putting lightning into them
I just write to the rocks instructions for how to do some work. I get paid for doing that."
I try to make rocks think with electricity and then cry when it doesn't think the way I want it to (software engineer)
I’m a literal wizard. I spend hours writing in an esoteric language known only by those who study it in order to bend the world to my will and make things happen as I wish it.
The structure of my magic spells determine what the outcomes will be, and things can get really strange if you mess up the syntax.
I take food from the baker and carry it to people's homes directly in exchange for custom. We call it "being a delivery girl". The amazing part is what the baker makes, it's called "pizza"
Farmer. I operate big metal things that weigh as much as your village that sucks down every plant over an area the size of Lichtenstein, then produces enough grain to feed 1700s England for a decade.
No, I'd just tell them I'm a wizard.
Ok, do something then
Takes out their smartphone and starts the beer drinking app.
Greetings fellow wizard.
Gotem
Mine's pretty easy- I'm a bard!
Username does NOT check out.
Unless you multiclass
Lmao good point, not an effective sounding multi class but sounds fun as hell
I steer gigantic metal birds pulled by armies of horses carrying dozens of people, to the antipodes... in less than one day... using dead animal juice.
I'm a lot like a guard. But, it's now much easier and more profitable for the criminals to steal or hold for ransom information. So, instead of guarding a warehouse or office, I guard that information.
Ooh, I like this. They'd totally get that.
I tell employers how to prevent their workers from getting killed, and of they don't listen, I tell the government to make sure the employer can't work like that.
And most of the workers find me annoying for it.
This is actually one of the things that would confuse a 1700 person the most. Why would the government care about the lives of workers?
You absolutely do not have to answer. But do you work for OSHA?
I do workplace safety, just not in the US. So, kind of.
That's awesome. Thanks for sharing!
HR?
Ouch. No, workplace safety
sorry, it was a bit low. Have a good day, safety man!
These days, I'm a residential carpenter in New England - I'd imagine it would be very easy to talk about my trade to people from the 1700s, and I'm sure the builders of that time would be fascinated by the power tools we have now.
I can barely get my wife to understand virtualization/containerization and she’s very intelligent, let alone someone from the 18th century who couldn’t even comprehend what a computer was.
This likely has more to do with my shitty explaining ability than anything else. 😊
I'm a programmer. I think I would explain it as creating and operating mechanical contraptions that help students find books to read and help them write new works and send them to professors. I work at a university and that is basically what our program does.
I used to work. Now the kingdom pays me to just be.
Probably easier to explain to a 1700s peasant than most americans today
They had accountants in the 1700s. The principles of double entry bookkeeping remain the same, but the technology difference with computers and accounting software would make the day to day work unrecognizable.
I wait tables, so, yeah.
Ah, a bar wench!
LOL c'mon
I'm always suspicious of these sorts of posts. Feels like the answers could be used to profile the users who reply. Maybe the internet has made me way too paranoid.
I'm a barista, coffee houses were a relatively new thing in 1700. People from the Middle East and East Africa would probably understand "I make coffee", and maybe some very trendy Europeans as well (Wikipedia says the first coffee house in Europe opened in 1645 in Austria.)
If they weren't familiar with coffee, I'd say I make a beverage with the opposite properties of beer. It's hot and perks you up where beer is cold and dulls your senses.
(Random thought: how did beer refrigeration work pre-industrial revolution? Were our ancestors chugging lukewarm beer?)
Ancestors? My friend, people drink lukewarm beer now.
Ever hear of the giant insurance company, Lloyd's of London. It started as a coffee house.
Back in the day, many people used coffee houses as their business office. Houses and streets were unmarked, and inviting a stranger to your home could be problematic. Meeting and making a deal at the coffee house was safer and simpler. Without a central post office, it was a lot easier to send a letter to 'John Doe care of Lloyd's' than to expect it to find your house.
Pretty soon, folks got the idea of setting up companies to invest in ships to the New World. If one guy invested all his money in one ship, there was a reasonable chance that it would sink. If he got together with nine other people they could send out ten ships, and if only two made it back they'd still read a profit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd%27s_of_London
That was the best read I've had all day, thanks Sgt. Awesome!
Look on Youtube for an old BBC series 'Connections."
It's the history of science, showing how one change can cascade through time. To continue the story; the new insurance companies wanted their ships to survive. They studied the matter and figured out that pine tar was the best way to stop leaks. There were plenty of pine trees in the New World, so they contracted some Americans to make pine tar, promising to buy all they could deliver. The process had other byproducts, and eventually drinking coffee led to the creation of the chemical industry.
Thanks!
I found this, which I've only watched a few minutes of but is I suspect what you were referring to?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ
That's the one. Enjoy!
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://m.piped.video/watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I visited a brewery in Germany that was mined out of the bottom of a volcano. It was pretty fucking chilly underground there even in the dead of summer, so maybe that's where they kept it?
Idk, I showed up to the wrong tour and I only know like 3 words in German so I had zero idea what was happening 98% of the time.
From my very small knowledge, yes, beer was consumed at room temperature. In Germany it still is, for example. Also, beer had less alcohol and was much more like bread in that it was nutritious and filling than what we have now.
In Germany, people don't drink warm beer, if, like anywhere else, they can avoid it.
I think they would.
“I drive around giving people rides to where they need to go”
What sort of buggy do your horses pull?
Mine’s got almost 500 horses
My work is similar to that of a librarian, except the library I work with is invisible and can contain more books and scrolls than any normal library ever could.
My invisible library has information about all kinds of things, the weather, the money earned and spend, and other things that are important for merchants, scholars and leaders to know.
It is my job to make sure the information arrives and is stored properly in this library. Also I have to make it easy for others to find and retrieve the information they need from this library.
You make the internet sound magical!
Well it kind of is, isn’t it?
At least, I like to pretend it is :)
Take my upvote sir! Best explanation yet
I fix giant metal birds that light themselves on fire and scream really loud to fly across the sky. The kingdom heavily regulates who fixes them, how they fix them, and who flies them to make sure everyone is safe.
I build buildings
why then, are they not called builts when you finish building them?
Sorry I construct structures.
Later, nature conceals structures.
Why do you of out eat the oven in hot of the food?
is that an AI hallucinating? Hi Gemini!
Close but no banana
Jim Davis really has run out of material, even in 2013
I mean, yeah. The theater goes back to at least Ancient Greece. So they’d know what I’m talking about, even if the job duties have shifted slightly throughout the centuries.
I'm an archaeologist.
Back in the 1700s this wasn't really a thing. Although there were folk, usually educated people like vicars and wealthy land owners, who called themselves 'antiquarians'.
This mostly involved them employing the local unemployed to hack away at old burial mounds/tombs looking for treasure. Buggering up the archaeology for us future scientists in the process!
Most likely yes, the organisation I work for would have been 200 years old at that stage.
I'm a postie.
I design and quote Wi-Fi solutions for the hospitality industry, so probably not. I have a rough enough time describing it to my grandmother...
Imagine an abacus. Now imagine that abacus to be very large, as large as the side of a building, with hundreds of rows, each row with 256 possible arrangements.
Now imagine making different arrangements of the rows in that abacus, such that they are directions on how to change the arrangements of other rows in that same abacus. Further, suppose that this abacus can follow a series of these directions itself, without a person needing to do it.
What I do is to write a series of these instructions in order to accomplish specific tasks on the rest of the abacus. Adding numbers together, search through rows to find specific numbers, copying them. Numbers might represent points on a map, accounts in a business, words in a book, even colors in a picture, like you might find in a tapestry.
But then imagine this abacus is the size of a whole city - that's the number of rows it has. But its elements are so small that the whole of it can fit in your pocket. And it uses the same energy to accomplish its tasks that is found in a bolt of lightning, but in very small amounts.
I uh, am currently debugging part of an abacus? Where one row is acting on another row while the first row changes?
Hardware race conditions suck.
I feel like they'd lose you in the second paragraph, unless maybe you were talking to an especially bright academic. Not because they don't get the concept, but because they don't get how that would help anything, living in a world where you make most of your own stuff manually.
Also, energy wouldn't be spoken about for another century after this, so you'll need to try again with electricity. The OG physics guys like Newton were still alive, and knew it as vis viva, but nobody else would really know what that meant.
I am an expert in crops. I have traveled the globe to learn about them. I have created new varieties to plant. Landowners around the globe seek me out for knowledge and seeds.
That actually is a timeless career. Kudos to you for tracing the footsteps of our founders
Weed farmer
Weed guys can't pay me enough. 😉
Fuck no, I work in AI automation for computer processes.
So you teach rocks to use lightning to think
Sounds like witchcraft to me. Might wanna just say you're a scholar instead lol.
We made an automaton clerk. It has neither arms nor body, but it works all day translating physician's documents, so they may be stored with uniformity in a library that has neither shelves nor paper.
I make the horse poop smell and sound great coming out? ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Here, you lost something: \
Bizzare it’s there on my end. Glitch in the Matrix?
No, that's an escape character. You have to double up on it for it to show up.
To be doubly clear, if you want to use a special character literally instead of figuratively, you can add a \. That's an escape character. This includes \ itself, which if you look at the source on this comment you can see I'm typing twice.
Another example: *not italicised*, which I write \*not italicised\*, so it doesn't just come out not italicised.
I'm a "blacksmith" using advanced machinery to aid in the process.
They had pretty good clocks already, so maybe you could describe it in those terms.
I try to predict the future in order to find a way for us to invest the money universities have given us that ensures we can pay scholars a modest wage once they're too old to work. The goal is to not run out of money before the last scholar dies.
I'm a stochastic Asset Liability Modelling specialist in the financial and investment risk function of the asset management company of a pension plan for the university sector.
Stock markets and securities had already existed in various forms for centuries, but pensions and insurance are really more of 19th century phenomenon, as are probabilistic views of the world (closely related). Stochastic analysis is a 20th century beast, and multidimensional non-linear optimisation in financial mathematics is a relatively recent 21st century development!
The very broad strokes of it? Sure. The specific nature of it? Absolutely not. I'm in a fairly specialized branch of printing, and while I understand the basic principles, I couldn't explain, for instance, why it is that the printable CMYK gamut is so much smaller than the sRGB gamut, which is in turn far smaller than the visible color gamut. Nor could I explain why certain formulations of ink don't produce linear colors, and why inks for different processes tend to broadly be more or less linear.
Yes, a doctor is probably one of the jobs that would be the best understood
I fit suits and make custom clothing for people for a fine mens clothes store. That's been around forever.
Machining and welding existed in some form back then, but I'd have to explain some updates.
I give people rides in my horse and buggy in exchange for cash and sometimes barter.
You could actually do better, I think. You drive a carriage for hire, but It's equipped with something like a (fire powered) water wheel so it doesn't need horses.
Edit: It also might be of interest to them that ordinary people can afford your services. In their time schmucks walked.
True. My creativity doesn't come out with story telling like this. My creativity is more of the MacGyver type.
That's probably for the best. When's the last time this situation came up? Haha.
In my time, we’ve covered much of the world in a mesh of fine glass wires. We shine light through them to communicate over long distances. I edit the texts in the light emitting boxes to tell the light where to go.
I’m also largely responsible for cleaning up other people’s messes, like the day shift techs who generate shitty MOPs with a shitty tool that they don’t know is doing stuff wrong because they’ve never actually run a command in a Cisco, Juniper, Alcatel, Overture, etc. in their life and now I’m just ranting and rambling…
I'm a teacher. They would understand that I educate the young, but would be nowhere close to understanding my students. They would think I teach a few children of the wealthy when I actually teach hundreds from the poorest of families in my area. Including several imigrants who speak a different language and many students with various disabilities.
I do building maintenance. I might have to explain wiring and electrical to them. But plumbing has been around since roman times, so I think they would get it.
So basically we have these extremely powerful but terribly stupid machines that can basically do anything as long as you know how to talk to them and tell them exactly how to do what you want them to do. I'm that guy who talks to these machines and make them do what people want.
I tell my users it's magic. My job is to be a wizard. When I write new programs it's coming up with a new spell.
"I write spells, but they work with technology, not magic. We have very advanced printing presses that are able to just to print words, but also do mathematics at an amazing pace and reproduce the printed word nearly instantaneously across oceans."
I am paid to perform other duties as assigned.
We have these things that are like stained glass books and I make how the glass looks.
Front-end developer.
Hmm... I'm a cosplayer/erotica model. So a seamstress that gets naked for money? Not too outlandish, but they'd never understand what cosplay was.
"I get paid to make myself clothes that I don't wear" would probably be the most confusing way to put this
Oh gosh that's beautiful. "I get paid to make clothes and then slowly remove them" is more accurate but not as fun
Not so. Plenty of folks liked to dress up like Greek gods or historical figures. And if you think folks in the 1700s didn't party hard...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellfire_Club
Emma Frost didn't invent anything, she was inspired by actual events
Hehe. On weekdays I go to a building that is owned by a company. I sit down on a chair at a desk, stare into a device and sometimes push some of the 105 buttons on it. Sometimes I also fill out forms on paper. After 8h plus break I leave and go home. In return the company advises my bank to increase a number each month.
We have really advanced technology, so few people have to work in agriculture or as handymen and theoretically it's enough to feed us all. The rest of us keeps busy by shuffling paper around. And in recent times we were able to do away with some of the paper and replace it with those machines. There are some slightly different variants, but they pretty much all look the same.
Yes, my job has a fairly simple explanation. People who feel bad for whatever reason sit on my couch and I help them feel better.
Edit: I'm a therapist.
I'm a magister, scholar, and merchant. (I own a technology company).
I'm a glorified locksmith for magic wiz boxes. Technically I do other things as well, but mostly it's just getting past the locks that people have lost the key for.
There are also magical entities that take works from the nether realm and bring them into existence here, only they are all powered by grumpy demons and so I don't deal with those.
My job is to digitize cassette tapes, VHS tapes, and other magnetic media.
So first I'd have to explain the miracle of how we managed to capture moving images and sounds onto these thin strips of plastic covered in rust. I'd follow that up by explaining how that technology is now considered quaint and out of date, and that these days we just get a thinking machine to remember that sort of thing for us.
Is your dad actually your dad, or is he your brother? Well my job uses your blood to find out these questions and more. We mix your blood with glowing ingredients, and compare the illuminated patterns that we see when we shine light on it with those of your family members, as well as compared to a rough reference mishmash of all blood we've collected so far.
Can you offer me your arm, please?
A witch!!
Bloodmage would be more accurate
Wow, learned something today
They probably wouldn't understand what a software engineer is. I would explain to them that we have mechanical devices that are so complex that humans have to write instructions on how it behaves. That's probably not enough, but would be enough for them to ask clarifying questions.
I am a computational chemist so... Not sure how you would translate that so that someone from the 1700s would understand but whatever it is would get me burned as a witch.
You predict what alchemical recipes do without doing them
Yeah im not sure that would count against the charges of witchcraft lol
Another chemist nailed it. Just say you're an alchemist.
"I try to find out stuff about the world, specifically about materials, using complicated machines that help me do the calculations"
Well, my job showed up around then. So they would know the term Millwright, but the modernisation would probably make them a little incredulous.
I'd love a medieval version of this question lol.
Why don't you answer it as though it's medieval then? Or ask one yourself and link it?
Sure lol. I harness the power of the sun and lightning to make special stones that other people can command it to make it work for them.
Basically creating a golem haha.
1700 is basically medieval. The differences are things most people couldn't spot, like potatoes and puffy clothing vs. tight. They were even still using plate armour and pikes, although it wasn't long for the world.
Edit: To be clear, I am aware that's 2.5 centuries after the medieval is usually demarcated as ending. Besides seafaring not a lot was fundamentally new, though.
I mean, this is like seeing the Dutch East India Company or Shakespearean London or the events of Les Mis in Game of Thrones.
In my mind, these are very distinct time periods. One has castles, the other had coffee.
But also still castles. It's true, people might divide them up now, but I'm not sure how uniformly or accurately.
You gave events over two centuries as an example, but if I was dividing the world up by associations, DEIC goes in with Shakespeare and Columbus, but Le Mis goes in with beam steam engines and sawtooth-roof factories in a later era. That's just me though, obviously it changed continuously in reality.
I guess what I'm asking is, how would medieval be different when it comes to this question? They're still going to understand trade and politics fine, but not most things machine or industry-related.
Edit: Even if I was explaining stuff to a guy like Ea-Nasir from the deep bronze age, I'd mainly have to adjust for metal being less common in their era. A lot of everyday life would be familiar to people from 1700AD.
The medieval period to me would be like in Game of Thrones or DnD settings, where automation tech was still hydraulic based at best, and medical knowledge was still very very limited.
1700s had steam engines and electricity, and apparently lithography was invented in the 1790s, so that's a big difference.
Yeah, but we're in 1700, as in a year after 1699. They had the word "electricity", and it referred to the tendency of feathers to stick to stuff. The first static electricity generator is recorded in 1705. Thomas Savery's practical steam engine was patented in 1698, but probably wasn't being used in actual mines as of 1700. The first impractical ones were recorded in classical antiquity, however. All the experiments and applications you're thinking of were from much later that century.
That's actually kind of a nitpick, though. They have a chance to know more than a person from 1500AD, 1200AD, or 1700BC. The point is that all of them still know basically nothing. You're not going to gain good analogies and comparisons until deep into industrialisation, and even then some things like computers will be tricky. Late life Ben Franklin would be somewhere in between, but it's my personal guess him being Ben Franklin would be more helpful than his prior knowledge of the concept of conservation of mass.
You're right, I misread the question and thought it was the 1700s. That changes it quite a bit 😂.
I'm in Product management. Even my own family don't really get what I do
I work with machines to create lessons for other machines to learn how to figure out you're sick before you feel sick.
Yeah... that sounds like bullshit haha
Easily, I think they had a form of food delivery in the 1700's, it's just faster now.
We have devised methods to allow performers, both thespian and musician, to be heard and seen by larger and larger audiences. These audiences can be several thousand. Imagine if an entire city came out to see the performance.
I am one of the individuals responsible for maintaining and operating those tools.
So you manage online streaming/video software?
Event production manager. Basically I’m in charge of all things sound, lights, and video for live events, like concerts, or theatrical performances.
For sure they'd understand. My job had been around for quite a while (not a hooker)
Lots of "I use magic to do magic stuff" for talking to people not long after the Salem witch trials.
If anyone has any idea on how to explain generative AI to someone from the 1700s, let me know. Maybe we can try explain my job then.
A machine that draws pictures/writes stories. In a way, it's easier than the more abstract computer related jobs, because its output it, on a high level, similar to that of a human.
Teaching sand how to think like a human
We discovered god. There's your explanation.
i sell gold & silver so ye
Yes.
First I'd have to explain electricity. Then I'd have to explain electric circuits.... And the function of different components
THEN i could try to explain what my job was
there's these things called electrons that are moved when you move a magnet relative to a conductor material, such as copper, these electrons have more power than steam. Switches are signal devices, like valves in a steam engine. We used to use them, for instance, to make a signal pass or not pass. These switches have, over the years, been manufactured to an astounding billions per square inch, they are all called transistors and have no moving parts. Four equations will be sufficient to describe the situation.
In 1700 steam engines weren't far in the future, but not invented yet.
perhaps in the same way we could understand the concept of AGI but haven't achieved it [... yet?]
Nope
I use vastly advanced looms to do math
Before the melancholia debilitated me, I worked a long time as an unguilded teamster.
Anyone in the history of civilization would understand my job
I'm a Linux Administrator. I maintain machines that think.
I make a long list of things for people to do in order to create a final outcome, and then keep track of the progress and find solutions for deviations.
Project manager.
They never really called it that, but I'm pretty sure the concept isn't new. Architects and the likes did pretty much the same when building ginormous structures back in ancient Rome and Egypt, so they'd get the idea. Probably wouldn't understand the project deliverable, but at least the process.
I direct a controlled form of lightning down metal wires to power electric candles, and other amazing devices.
in 1730 they invented magazines, pretty much most tech and communications jobs are based off of that
I make machines talk to each other so that people can talk to each other through the machines from really far away. Like, you know that brand new thing called the telegraph? Well now we call those optical telegraphs because ours are made of pieces of lightning called electricity, and I work on even better versions of that. You can talk to anyone you know instantly with the machines I work on, no matter where in the world they are.
Telegraphs weren't invented yet, they were invented in 1837.
Check it out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telegraph
Optical telegraphs, also called semaphores, were invented in 1684, and first experimented in 1767. The most popular system was invented in 1792. There are a lot of hills around the US and Europe named “Telegraph Hill” because they used to be where an optical telegraph station was set up.
You’re thinking of the electric telegraph, which was indeed invented in 1837, and very quickly supplanted optical telegraphs. We now use the term telegraph almost exclusively to describe the electric telegraph, but someone from the 1700s wouldn’t know that.
I'm a math nerd at the head of a math department for a big company. Pretty sure they still stoned math nerds to death then so I'd lie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle
Great books about math nerds in the 1700s. Surprised you never heard of it, Newton is a major character.
Lol damn, clearly timelines aren't my jam.
I put roofs on, both slate and standing seam. They would probably be surprised at how much money the really rich people have. But explaining standing seam would be pretty easy.
We even get our copper from Revere, as in Paul Revere, though he wasn't born until 1735.
Peasants and commoners understood exactly how much money the rich have - they have almost all of it. One look at a billionaire's mansion and they'd confirm that yep, that's a palace for a sultan or prince alright.
Yeah, maybe I'm the one who hasn't gotten over it. Some days it's the worst part of going to work (the other days it's usually the weather that's the worst part)
We're not all physicist. I coordinate the movement of goods from one county to the other.
I'm just going to call myself an artist of new media types and end it there.
I sell drugs and drug accessories, I doubt it would be hard to explain.
Someone else makes a complicated tools for teeth doctors to record what they do and helps them keep track of how much money they are owed.
I teach people to use that tool, and fix it when it breaks. Usually both because I'll try to explain how to do something and realize it's broken half way through
I create drawings of the enclosure of machines and contraptions, you know, the knobs and switches and all those things, and then instruct machines to assemble those machines according to the drawings.
Ambisonic is awesome man, it makes the sounds go vrooom all around you.
Books
Im a process auditor, so they would probably understand but would think my job is not necessary ( can't blame)
I work with a number of shops (all belonging to one family) to try to make sure that we send enough stock from the company's warehouse to them.
Yeah I'd say that's a simple one .
That's a challenge.
The job I do didn't exist when I was in high school, and most of the technology it was built on didn't exist until the early 1900s.
I suppose I could just call myself a general repairman and leave it at that.
I make energy (a word describing the measure of the invisible magic which makes sea waves happen, the sensation of warmth of the sun on your skin, and the effort you put into lifting heavy rocks) move around really, really, really fast, and lots and lots of it too.
Controlling this 'energy' is a difficult task because if you give it even a little chance, 'energy' will escape in the easiest, most useless way possible. Half my job is planning how to prevent energy from escaping without doing something useful first.
People who try to work together fail to do it well, so I help them understand why this happens, so that they can do better.
I'd say, Beethoven on "steroids"
I'm the guy who makes sure the castle is built to keep out the invaders. Only everything is made of captured lightning.
Gets burned at the stake
I work for a training department for a large financial institution. I think I could explain it as teaching people how to do their job better. Though I don't actually do much teaching, personally.
I am an IT Technician, I guess I would explain my job as being a scollar and a teacher.
They'd understand perfectly. When my employers buy something, it's my job to check that it arrives in good order and matches what we asked for, and then arrange for the sender to be paid.
Sometimes the thing is a piece of equipment for transmitting real-time video of tumours from one part of the country to another, but I don't think we need to go into that.
My official work title is "Site Reliability Engineer", which means I'm somewhere between a clerk, a tinkerer, and a millwright.
But I'm not recording any transactions by hand and the mills I work on don't have anything to do with grain. Instead, they're simple but very fast arithmetical machines that the moneychangers had built to account for every penny that moves from one bank to another.
Sometimes the machines don't work as they are expected to, and it's my job to catch this misbehavior and identify the cause so that one of the arithmetical millwrights can figure out how to fix it. I also help them them do the fixing and testing to make sure the equiment runs true before we set it back to work.
Not hard. I accept money and give it out on behalf of my Lords and Ladies, I mean, employers.
I'd have to go through a bunch of concepts about light, moving motion and photography in general but I'm sure we'd get there eventually.
I solve problems related to how lightning rocks talk to each other. Often there's an issue with how automatic scribes decide they don't feel like talking. Some days I must travel more than double the speed of your fastest horse using a metal box with wheels. I will often complain when my metal box picks the wrong music to play.
I think so? Libraries certainly existed, so there's that. Workshops existed, even if they were less industrialized/more artisanal. The only novelty might be that the two should be in the same place.
Then again, libraries of old apparently were used for a lot more than just books/scrolls, and trade guilds must have needed written materials often enough... Maybe the modern makerspace is a reinvention of an old concept? I have no idea.
I wonder how weird they would find: I work for one company. Other companies pay that company for me and my coworkers to do work for them. I may be moved to different companies to do similar type of work at each company.
Actually, yes. My job title originates from around that time I believe. The specifics of the jobs are slightly tweaked of course to modernize the job.
"I make money by typing things in modern typewriter."
If it's not a one line reply with a designation and a linkedin description, but a conversation over drinks, they'd get everything we explain to them. I presume it's a smart person. There are many people in today's time who won't get it in a one liner.
I don't doubt that you'd be able to explain it to them, I was just wondering how you'd go about doing it.
Yeah for sure, they had my job then, some advancements have been made is all.
Yes. We do it using computers now, so a lot of what I do is more database management but the basic method we use for accounting has been around since before the year of our lord 1300. All the stuff we do is just to make it possible to do at scale.
I work in a trade school and apprenticeship has been around for ages so I think it would translate. I would just say that I help teach apprentices along with their masters, specifically about boats and ships.
I do qa for headsets so uh... Imagine a painting that moves. Now imagine instead of seeing the world, there was a device that makes you only see those moving paintings. I make sure that device and the paintings work well together.
If anyone knows of any kind of animation technique from that era that would help with the description. But even flip books wouldn't be invented for like 150 more years so 🤷♀️ Maybe I could find a nice painting and give the person a bunch of mushrooms and be like "this but different"
I mean, they know what movement is and what real things look like when they move. I sure you could explain the concept of things on a screen moving to them.
Sales person.
I'm sitting jester
I spend most of the day in a room looking at humorous public announcements from people all over the world until someone breaks the communication system for the organization and exile criminals and bad actors
https://steve.savitzky.net/Songs/world/
Doug Stanhope, the comedian has a good bit about the mexicans taking your job, then you must not have skills! Learn by pantomime: "Crank Crank?" "Si! Crank Crank" https://youtu.be/FOt03BNPExo?t=2220
Yes. I'd just say "you know how the Courts have the power to do X, and decide Y? Well the government decided to devolve those powers to an independent office, so that people didn't have to pay for lawyers and deal with complicated legal processes. I work in that office making the Y decisions."
We have metal golems that don't move but can create visual illusions and telepathically communicate with each other. I tell them what to do.