Calibrating Children and Families - Data Behaviourism and the New Algorithmic Logic: a discussion with Val Gillies

The last decade has been characterised by the increasing influence of computer science and more particularly the amalgamation of big data with behavioural economics to produce a new paradigm of digital governance. Given the central role that family intervention has played over the centuries as a mechanism of state control it is unsurprising that child-parent relations are at the forefront of new attempts to ‘predict and prevent’ through mass digital surveillance. In the UK detailed personal data is now routinely collected and pooled, providing ‘real time’ observation of family life and a platform for experimental designs in AI and behavioural based interventions. This paper attempts to scope out changing policy landscapes and to explore how parents and their family relations are being quantified and translated into data points as part of a technological refashioning of behaviourist logics and objectives.