Using Digital Art to make the Tension beetween Capital and Commons Transparent. Innovation in shaping knowledge of Internet business practices as a form of cultural knowledge

This paper examines a digital art performance by Ubermorgen.com called Google Will Eat Itself (GWEI.org) as an example of the tensions between Capital and the public commons. Using notions of transparency and knowledge as a form of innovation rooted in Nonaka’s Knowledge Management theory, it examines the ways in which knowledge about how Google uses the Internet is made explicit through the art performance. Finally, it discusses the implications for transparency in Internet business through both the act of GWEI expanding audiences for understanding Internet based revenue generation models and using artifacts rooted cultural contexts in order to challenge the assumptions inherent in the current configuration of Capital and the public commons. It ends with calling into question the role of Google as a form of “Cultureware,” dependent on the
public commons, yet profiting from it in the realm of the Capital.