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Getting Horizontal in Tasmania

Separating the Woods from the Trees

Robert Gowty
3 min readSep 23, 2022
Tasmanian mountain range in the upper Derwent Valley. All Pics by the Author.

One of the things that frustrates me deeply about late stage capitalism is the desire to own everything, in particular, ideas.

Within the egos of avaricious men lies the belief that without their genius, the secrets of the universe will never be revealed.

Yet this feeble genius relies on egregious and ever expanding copyright and patent laws, backed up by an army of lawyers ready to stop anyone harnessing what ultimately is humanity’s collective knowledge.

They stand on the shoulders of giants, slay the giant then proclaim themselves the new giant. They’ll destroy a better idea simply for the purposes of maintaining a monopoly for their own ideas or simply for commercial expedience.

Cultures throughout the world have found interesting solutions to common problems.

One of the most common problems of all? Building materials.

Given the state of the timber industry in Tasmania, I was particularly struck by this article by Maria Rattray on the Japanese “natural technology” called daisugi.

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Robert Gowty
Robert Gowty

Written by Robert Gowty

Extemporal Explorer. Music, art, fiction, science fiction, culture and technology. Tasmanian Existentialism. Aficionado of the number seven.

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