this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
270 points (97.5% liked)
Asklemmy
43394 readers
1558 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.