The Merge Concept
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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