the homebrew manifesto

to spend hours wrapped in a proof or knotted by the origins and the fate of the universe feels like an indulgence to many, but it is one of the most beautiful gestures we can make to the universe—to say thank you for the richness you’ve afforded me, which i simply cannot reap in one short lifetime. thank you for all your complexity, knots, and paradoxes that i may never be able to unravel myself—perhaps not even with centuries of collective human effort. thank you for giving me so much to be curious about and in awe of. it is perhaps why i’ve always admired mathematicians and physicists. the pursuit of these subjects becomes a high form of spiritual practice, a profound way of saying i yearn to know you better, solely for the joy of understanding.

marie curie famously wrote that “a scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.” learning should feel like this—a state of wonder, a playful unraveling of the unknown. to indulge in exploration—when no one demands an immediate payoff—is to affirm that knowledge is worth pursuing for its own sake, even in an age that so often measures the worth of an idea by its commercial viability.

the most profound leaps often emerge from such “frivolous” curiosity: feynman’s obsession with wobbly plates that led to breakthroughs in quantum electrodynamics or kepler’s fixation on the precise nesting of planetary orbits in polyhedra, which ultimately unraveled the laws of motion. we dream of a world that encourages this kind of pure exploration—a world where entire afternoons might be spent studying molecular dynamics or thinking up new computational paradigms, not because it will yield a new app or business model, but because the act of understanding is, in itself, transcendent. this is the vision that animates homebrew.

we take our name from the original homebrew computer club, a community of hobbyists who simply wanted to be among fellow computer enthusiasts, sharing ideas and building together. they weren’t meeting to strategize a multi-billion dollar valuation; they just tinkered for the joy of it—and in doing so, they sparked a revolution in personal computing.

in that sense, homebrew isn’t just a “community of technologists” or a “residency for science.” we see ourselves as a space that inherits and evolves this ethos: question everything, tinker freely, and chase strange leads down rabbit holes.

learning here becomes a sacred act of paying homage to the grandeur of existence—whether we’re deciphering ancient molecules or engineering new interface. we approach building with reverence, seeing technology as one of humanity’s most astounding achievements. such a haven endures only if it remains unapologetic about valuing awe over application, discovery over immediate success. it means refusing to reduce the natural world, or our own creative potential, to a bottom line.

we do not dismiss real-world outcomes—history abounds with radical breakthroughs that bore fruit in ways no one anticipated. but we refuse to let that be the only reason we learn or invent. we want to keep the door open to “useless” speculation, to half-baked tangents that might lead nowhere—or might lead to entire fields we haven’t even named yet. that freedom is essential to the ethos of genuine research.

the dream is that in choosing to live this way—learning for the joy of it, thinking from scratch, and pushing frontiers—we gently remind the world what science and technology can be at their most beautiful core. with each question posed and each half-baked theory shared, we echo the spirit of those early gatherings—like the royal society—that risked their reputations and allowed themselves to look foolish to question everything from celestial mechanics to the nature of life itself.

this is an invitation to be foolish, curious, rebellious—to chase questions with no obvious answers, to build, tinker and dream without permission. join us in building a place where we honor curiosity as the sincerest form of gratitude we can offer a universe that still brims with wonder.