That the “personality” insights themselves are banal should not distract us from the fact that the volume and depth of the new surplus supplies enabled by these extraction operations are unprecedented; nothing like this has ever been conceivable. As Kosinski told an interviewer in 2015, few people understand that companies such as “Facebook, Snapchat, Microsoft, Google and others have access to data that scientists would not ever be able to collect.” Data scientists have successfully predicted traits on the five-factor personality model with surplus culled from Twitter profile pictures (color, composition, image type, demographic information, facial presentation, and expression…), selfies (color, photographic styles, visual texture…), and Instagram photos (hue, brightness, saturation…). Others have tested alternative algorithmic models and personality constructs. Another research team demonstrated the ability to predict “satisfaction with life” from Facebook messages. This new world has no manager on his or her hands and knees scissoring pages of computer conferencing messages into thematically organized piles of paper scraps. It’s not the office floor that is crawled. It is you.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 860