From Eugenics to Targeted Advertising: The Dark Role of Data in Sorting Humanity

When the gentleman-​scholar Francis Galton inspected his fellow men of Victorian Britain, he found them wanting: “We want abler commanders, statesmen, thinkers, inventors, and artists,” he wrote in an article called “Hereditary Talent and Character.” “The natural qualifications of our race are no greater than they used to be in semi-​barbarous times,” even though “the conditions amid which we are born are vastly more complex than of old.” Modern civilization was all too much. “The foremost minds of the present day seem to stagger and halt under an intellectual load too heavy for their powers.”

Genius was needed, but was in short supply. Education would never be enough, for there were simply not enough gifted men and women, not enough born geniuses, to confront the complexity of the times. England needed more geniuses, more people of extraordinary talent. They needed, Galton decided, to be bred.

The writings of Galton’s illustrious if infamous cousin, Charles Darwin, offered a way forward. In his Origin of Species, Darwin used the example of human breeding of domestic animals, such as show pigeons and...