This is an international hobby which will broaden horizons and begin to make the beer drinker look far beyond his own beer mat. Brewing is a biological and completely natural process. Technology merely offers biology the optimum conditions for development and by controlling the parameters, these living systems are steered in the right direction. Brewers concern themselves with life and they realise that living systems can be influenced but not controlled. Despite the perfection of our technological control systems, every decoction remains a little different.
Brewing means understanding living processes.
Brewing does need technology. You don't need to understand it from the inside and you will have fun brewing good beer. Your computer can help you brew if that is what you want. Whether it is as a recipe store, which with time, will become an instruction manual for the system, or as an aid to help regulate the brewing conditions, or accessing world wide online discussions with other Homebrewers, or maybe designing bottle labels and prospectuses and printing invitations to social gatherings to taste the last extract, your PC will find applications. Measuring, controlling and regulating a live reactive system is a motivation to write the best program, use it and swap it with others.