Inventor Woody Norris on 100 New Periodic Tables

With the inclusion of over 4,000 words of fresh interview material this morning from ingenious inventor Woody Norris, Architects of Tomorrow, Volume 1 is now (I hope!) done and just waiting for final editorial approval before going live.

I'd actually given up hope on reaching Norris in time for the Volume 1 release, but he surprised me by calling my office Friday morning, apologizing for having been away working to promote the latest incarnation of his HyperSonic Sound (HSS) technology, now being developed through his new company, Parametric Sound. If you're not familiar with HSS, check it out here. I can't wait to experience this in person!

Norris and I spent a large part of our interview discussing the inventing process. He's a firm believer in the power of invention to solve humanity's problems, and he feels we've hardly begun to realize the full potential of human invention. The best and by far largest quantity of inventions still lie in our future. This is a piece of what you can look forward to reading from him:

WVW: Toward the end of our last conversation, you said that you’d had a couple of ideas for inventions just while we were talking, which just blew my mind—

Norris: And I always write those down. I’m serious. Nothing of consequence has been invented yet. This whole field of nanotechnology— When I grew up, I came to the point in school where I realized that there was the periodic table of elements, and everything in the entire world that we have done up to pretty much now has been based on combinations of the elements—refining them, making a few artificial elements. With nanotechnology, it’s like you’ve got 100 new periodic tables. Really! Every element, carbon being the most common in the world we live in, changes into about eight different elements just by making it nanoparticle-sized. It changes colors, electrical characteristics, becomes an insulator, practically a perfect conductor, stronger than steel. And this is just one element! So it’s like we have a whole bunch of new periodic tables with which to make new inventions. But if you don’t learn about that and study it, you’re a caveman. You’re looking at earth, wind, and fire being all there is. Knowledge is the key to it all. Einstein made a great comment one time. He said, “The most abundant thing in the universe is hydrogen. The only thing more abundant is stupidity.”