Now that we have gone through why we want to do this, let’s carry on with what we are going to do about it with these few projects.

notes

An organised project is a successful project. Having an idea or question isn’t enough to do research – you must also have a plan of what to do, somewhere to note down what you find and write something to describe what you have done so others can know. All of this requires some form of organisation, and the most common way to do this is with some form of notebook.

An existing notebook like Notion can work, of course, but a shortcoming of Notion is its set of predefined modules. Going back to the doctrine espoused in our previous post, we don’t want to be a top-down organisation pushing down what we think is best for the user. Instead, we want users to be able to fulfil what they want. To this end, notes is designed to be a fully modular and user-extensible notebook application. If a user isn’t satisfied with the functionalities available, he can develop

Amateur research is fine and all, but doing research is hard. Research isn’t just about the research – it’s about finding something to experiment on, something to experiment with, and making sure that whatever you find gets known to the wider world.

Unfortunately, today’s research exists in a bubble. Starting from the beginning of an experiment to publishing the results of one’s work, there is a certain way of doing things that presents such a barrier to entry to the layman. Lab equipment requires enormous sums of capital. Chemical suppliers refuse to sell to individuals. Journals won’t consider research from some uncredited institution. How can one even start?

We aim to address that with foundry collective. Research should not just be the domain of big institutions with enough resources. From a network of people to bounce and build ideas off, to a logistics system that keeps you supplied with the things you need to conduct experiments, to building affordable and effective lab systems, w

Since the dawn of modern science in the Renaissance, research has been conducted by the amateur. From Galileo looking up to the stars, to Leeuwenhoek grinding his microscopes, to Faraday tinkering with electricity, discoveries have been made by people driven by interest or curiosity about the world around them. However, with the rise of industrialization and universities within the past century or so, research has been increasingly segregated into ivory towers of research facilities.

We don’t think that that should be the case. Professional research is research driven by funding; research chasing grants and the support of those with the means to provide them. This inevitably introduces some form of bias to the research. Do we really need to look any further than the mess nutrition science has become with Big Sugar?

Research is more than trying to find something politically expedient or economically viable: it is the extension of mankind’s knowledge. X-Ray and machine learning’s progress