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

I sell drugs and drug accessories, I doubt it would be hard to explain.

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.

We're not all physicist. I coordinate the movement of goods from one county to the other.

I'm an artist, so probably. I do traditional painting, something they'd get immediately, but my digital stuff would be difficult to explain. They'd probably think my subject matter is weird, but they'd certainly be able to identify my work as art.

Books

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 direct a controlled form of lightning down metal wires to power electric candles, and other amazing devices.

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.

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.

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

in 1730 they invented magazines, pretty much most tech and communications jobs are based off of that

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 .

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'm just going to call myself an artist of new media types and end it there.

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.

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.

Ambisonic is awesome man, it makes the sounds go vrooom all around you.

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'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 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"