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.
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.
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.
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.
