A New Perspective for Risk Management: A Study of the Design of Generic Technology with a Matroid Model in C-K Theory - Principia Designae: Pre-Design, Design, and Post-Design - page 196

markets, this means that a generic technology will survive many evolutions on
the markets. Dynamically there will be a long term stability of a generic concept.
2. Expansion in the states of nature. On the other hand, the new technology will be
sensitive to “new” states of nature, ie states of nature that were not in Θ, states of
nature that were unknown—and not uncertain. It means that the generic concept
actually “opens” a new set of risks that is strictly speaking unknown, that is not a
combination of already known states, as if “nature” would be designing new
states! Hence the design perspective also lead to introduce a design logic in the
regeneration of the states of nature. For instance one can imagine that the
raincoat-cap technology might be sensitive to electromagnetic waves. Hence
the set of states of nature should be extended to include states like “electromag-
netic storm”. Hence the risk emergence process should be considered as a
design process, and even an expansive one.
3. Risk regeneration as an expansive design of the states of nature. Note that this
process of “expanding the states of nature” is not a modification of subjective
probability, but it actually consists in (re)designing the probability space of the
states of nature. The basic ground, the probability space Ω, A, P (where Ω is the
sample space, A is the σ-algebra of events and P is a probability measure
function—see Kolmogorov axiomatic) is extended to a new Ω'.
To conclude: the design perspective on risk leads to formulate specific concepts,
that we call “generic concepts”, which are of the form “there is an alternative that has
a high utility whatever the states of nature taken in a set of states Θ”. Such a generic
concept consists in designing an independence relationship with some invariants,
namely the elements of Θ. In the next part we will a model of the design of such
an independence. Based on this model, we will then study, in the last part, how this
new design dynamically interacts with “invariances” that evolve over time.
13.3 Part 2: The Design of Generic Concepts in Matroids
and Algebraic Extensions Models
13.3.1 Beyond an Evolutionary Model of Generic
Technology Design: The Example of Watt
and Boulton Reciprocating Steam Engine
Having identified a generic concept, we are interested in studying the design of such
a concept. There are already implicit models of the design of generic technologies.
The usual one is an “evolutionary, random” model: a generic technology is a
randomly emerging design that is applied progressively on a sequence of applica-
tions, and application after application this design appears dominating on a (large)
subset of these applications. The story of the steam engine is often told this way:
Watt designed a steam engine and progressively many applications were found for it.
Still the evolutionary model, where one “species” progressively adapt to multi-
ple environments, is only one possibility. As shown in (Kokshagina et al. 2013 ;