Ω From Holmes’ Law to Ohm’s Law

1. ΩFrom Holmes’ Law to Ohm’s Law Jim Chen University of Minnesota Law School Law in the Age of Networks: Implications of Network Science for Legal Analysis University of Illinois Center for Advanced Study March 10, 2006

2. Privacy and Communication as Reciprocal Images • Privacy law protects the ability to keep information secret • Free speech jurisprudence generally favors broad dissemination of information • Sometimes law punishes all forms of communication. E.g., Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293 (1966) • By contrast, we privilege communications between spouses, attorneys & clients, etc.

3. Law as the Conscious Structuring of Information Transfer (Vel Non) • Constitutional and common law doctrines involving privacy have a dynamic impact on interpersonal relations • Talking with coconspirators leads to criminal liability and loss of 4th amendment protection • Talking with your spouse, physician, attorney, or cleric is favored • Dinner table conversation is the essence of being human • Cf. Federalist No. 10: The oxygen that feeds fire also sustains respiration and life • Don’t asphyxiate yourself in an effort to avoid getting burned • Madison knew chemistry had progressed beyond phlogiston!

4. Strahilevitz on Privacy as a Product of Social Networks • Lior Jacob Strahilevitz, A Social Networks Theory of Privacy, 72 U. Chi. L. Rev. 919 (2005) • Network structure is crucial to understanding the dynamics of privacy (and derivatively of communication) • Nodes, strong versus weak links, interaction between structure and culture

5. Key Variables Affecting Social Networks • Salience of information • Scandalous or valuable versus boring • Connectedness of nodes • Some are “supernodes”; others are recluses • Conductivity of nodes • What is the probability that a node will communicate new information? • Some social links are strong; others are weak • Complexity of information • Weak links transmit, except as to complex information • Durability of information • Veracity versus mendacity • Cf. signal versus noise

6. Ohm’s Law as a Static Representation of Holmes’s Law • To the extent that the “marketplace of ideas” operates within social networks, we can describe the transmission, suppression, and retention of information in terms used to describe electricity • This is a purely static model, with no power to describe, let alone predict, the evolution of these social networks

7. V = voltage (v) I = current (a) Z = impedance (Ω) R = resistance X = reactance C = capacitance (f) L = inductance (h) f = frequency (Hz) f of DC = 0 Hz AC has positive f Ohm’s Law and Its Corollaries

8. Electricity as an Analogy for Information Within Social Networks • Current or amperage (I) represents the salience of information • Impedance (Z), especially pure resistance (R), expresses the lack of conductivity between certain nodes • Analogizing complexity to frequency (f) allows us to use concepts of capacitive and inductive reactance (XC and XL) in analyzing information transmission • Simple information (like DC) is blocked by capacitors • Complex information (like AC) is blocked by inductors in proportion to its frequency • Durable information can be stored, as electrical energy can be stored within a capacitor • Further work? Ways of quantifying information-bearing signals versus noise shed light on truth v. falsehood

9. Thank You chenx064@maroon.tc.umn.edu 612-625-4839