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
“Shopkeeper” would be a pretty damn good job title too compared to retail.
‘Shopkeeper’ implies you might actually own the shop you keep. Modern retail provides few such jobs.
I don’t think the people in the 1700s would care
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
I get peanuts in return while the king keep most of the loot.
Well, at least this part hasn’t changed.
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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.
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.
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.
I’m currently in college to go into GIS (Geographic Information Systems/Science) and lemme tell ya I think more people in 1700 would understand “cartographer” than they would today.
You are correct. People these days are idjits.
Not even really that but people tend to think that others have just outright stopped making maps. “Haven’t we made all the maps already?” Is a common response I get when I tell them. They seem to forget about data analysis and all that.
Imagine trying to explain to 1700s folk that modern people DONT like to use the Mercator projection for small scale maps.
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.
i bet they’d get a kick out of moving stacks of barrels or fermentation tanks with a forklift.
Yeah, that would be really impressive!
“What are you going to tell me next, you have a one-time cure for consumption?”
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’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.
I try to make rocks think with electricity and then cry when it doesn’t think the way I want it to (software engineer)
have you tried using Bauxite?
Half these comments wildly overcomplicate their job.
‘Imagine an entire city could see a bard perform!’ You run a theater, calm down. They’re old as rocks.
‘I’m an erotic cosplayer, so I don’t know if they’d follow.’ Honey, people in the 18th century knew about sex work.
Everyone in software has to hand-wave some magic. Your new peasant buddy can probably grasp… printing.
Even IT work I could just say I make and fix tools. They’re different tools, but my job is simply to make sure tools work for people who do other work, or making better tools for them to do their work.
At some point that reductionism might as well be ‘I perform labor for wages.’ Like if the guy gets follow-up questions, he might ask you for help fixing his tools, and you might pick up a hammer from the wrong end.
But any real effort does boil down to-- how’d that one comment put it? “Whispering to the lightning through the haunted frame.” Either there are layers of ‘okay imagine this other bizarre technology’ or you’re just telling this guy that you can grab written words and drag them across the paper.
True, you’d have to explain that it’s a very vague explanation, and maybe explain its a niche tool for a very specific labor force. I doubt most people have heard or care to hear a detailed explanation of NED Graphics Design and Repeat, nor its use of HASP keys, but I think saying it’s a specific tool for making patterns on clothes and I help make sure the tool works is sufficient. You or the person from a previous time may ask for more details, but especially in older times you could just say I can’t tell you more because my employers don’t want people to copy tools.
Hiding the exact details of your trade was so common back then it caused problems for apprentices, as they were often expected to learn from watching or laboring a long time rather than directly taught.
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?
Please tell me it’s not Opentext…
Fortunately not. I haven’t quite descended to the seventh circle of hell yet.
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.
Kelso: “OK, let’s get started. Question number one, what’s your job?”
John: “I’m a senior executive statistical analysis technician.”
Kelso: “You’re a senior execu… what?”
John: “Well, in plain English, I concatenate the verse statistical information to maximize the potential utilization of data.”
Kelso: “So you give people data!”
( Kelso is on the verge of writing it down. )
John: “A lot of people think that. No. My job’s not about output, it’s about throughput.”
Kelso: “So you throughput data!”
John: “Well, now you’ve lost me, son. Oh, listen Michael, you know the eight tracks you love so much?”
Kelso: “You make them!”
John: “No, but because of us, other people who make them are able to make them better.”
Kelso: “So, you fix stuff!”
John: “You could say that…”
( Kelso starts writing. )
John: “But I wouldn’t.”
( Kelso erases it with frustration. )
And then it keeps going on the like for a while.
Yeah, that’s pretty much how it goes for me.
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.
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.
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!
We have found a witch, may we burn her?
“So how do you guys get used to tasting piss so often?”
i’m teaching silicon rocks how to think
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.
I used to work. Now the kingdom pays me to just be.
Probably easier to explain to a 1700s peasant than most americans today
