Neurocracy

Neurocracy aims to be equal parts interactive fiction and cautionary tale about the intersection of surveillance capitalism, big data, and authoritarianism. This is conveyed through the medium of a futuristic equivalent of Wikipedia known as Omnipedia, in which the reader is presented with articles and information in a familiar format so that they may piece together the history and events of the year 2049.

I wrote a lot of custom code (which is open source) to enable Drupal to behave like a wiki while also making the content itself simple to edit and expand upon. A simulated revision system was implemented to allow readers to jump between different iterations of the same content for chronological in-universe “days”.

Another system was created to allow us to define, manage, and display short pieces of content accessible by hovering over or tapping pseudo-links without leaving the page. Analogous to Wikipedia’s article previews, these pop-ups are displayed as rich tooltips (powered by Tippy.js) on wider screens, while on narrow screens they’re displayed as a panel that slides up into view.

The Drupal administration interface was expanded upon to accommodate the episodic day system, along with multiple user interfaces to manage everything from the pop-up content to various settings.

Press, awards, and reviews

We’ve been covered by numerous publications from The Guardian to PC Gamer, and have been nominated for and won several awards:

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