taka (Shunsuke Takagi) is an independent researcher who studies, writes about, and builds institutions and technology. His work explores simpler social systems through social security, digital democracy, and digital public goods.

At Civichat, he translated eligibility rules written in natural language into computable form and built a conversational interface for finding applicable public support. Lessons that could not be sustained as a business were carried into OpenFisca Japan, and then into research on who supports public software and how it can endure.

He approaches Ethereum and crypto not as objects of speculation, but as institutional spaces where rules, funding, and conditions for participation can be tested in software. Work on governmentality, Quadratic Funding, DeCartography, DIG SHIBUYA, and Funding the Commons joins technology, finance, organizations, and operations into one design problem.

Through Plurality, he has explored technology and democracy that let people collaborate without flattening their different values. At Plural Reality, he builds software and spaces where AI does not decide the outcome, but makes issues, conflicts, and uncertainty legible so more people can take part in judgment.

tkgshn is a website that brings together projects, the things I keep using in What’s in my bag, and the books that have shaped how I think.