Check out this video! I start with a quick overview of network theory, and then begin building a category where the morphisms are electrical circuits. These lecture notes provide extra details:

• Network theory (part 30).

With luck, this video will be the first of a series. I’m giving a seminar on network theory at U.C. Riverside this fall. I’ll start by sketching the results here:

• John Baez and Brendan Fong, A compositional framework for passive linear networks.

But this is a big paper, and I also want to talk about other papers, so I certainly won’t explain everything in here—just enough to help you get started! If you have questions, don’t be shy about asking them.

I thank Blake Pollard for filming this seminar, and Muhammad “Siddiq” Siddiqui-Ali for providing the videocamera and technical support.