The merge routine concept in brainstorming was created to solve a simple problem: if words are segments of thought, and our library equals the interaction of these segments of thought, then how could more ideas be generated? The answer is simply by working on new interactions of words. The merge technique is ultimately the primary technique for re-interacting words with each other.

If our dictionary is a collection of words which are the units of ideas, and our library contains the contents of the dictionary organized in different intelligible ways, then there could be more books written which would simply be our dictionary's words organized in different intelligible ways. By working with the interactions of words we can find all manner of new ideas if we simply exhaust the interactions of words in ways that make sense.

We can further illustrate this with the fact that some CD-Rom terminology was already present with us when Edison invented the phonograph. At that time someone could logically have seen the idea of the personal computer. We are of the opinion that in some sweep of imagination some brave soul stood forth and said, "You know, one day we may be able to write books with something like this, and have the rolls play back the books and move a mechanism that writes their contents on paper!"

Ideas frequently come many decades before factual objects or events are created. And new ideas can almost always be stated in existing words from our own dictionary, or in combinations of the old parts of words such as suffixes and prefixes. This is shown when we see that most of our words come from Latin or Greek roots.

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