Approximately 11 visitors and 3 USHMM staff members took a tour of the exterior, entrance, Hall of Witness and the Hall of Remembrance. The following is a tweetscript of my (@boxednoise) impression of these spaces (posted in reverse chronology):

The floor also serves as a reminder that those that came before us serve as a foundation for our humanity and the future. #USHMM about 2 hours ago from Tweetie

Honeycombed floor constructed w/ triangles, shows power of one into many. #USHMM

about 2 hours ago from web

Using scale, materials and emptiness to create a space of remembrance and sacredness. #USHMM

about 3 hours ago from web

Using architecture to create a sense of confinement and disjointedness.

about 3 hours ago from web

Architecture evokes emotion and feelings by connecting individuals w/ touchpoints in both an individual’s and the collective memory. #USHMM about 3 hours ago from web

Are we being watched? Are there guards in those windows? #USHMM

about 3 hours ago from web

Exhibits are being concealed by interior architecture; perhaps a since of disorientation in the midst of movement and confinement. #USHMM about 3 hours ago from web

Interior creates a collision in consciousness as you are forced to confront industrial materials as you come to grips w/ humanity. #USHMM about 3 hours ago from web

Materials, scale and style allow for #USHMM to blend into surroundings. Is deceptive, federal style creates a veil for building’s content. about 3 hours ago from web

Walking through a limestone facade into a concrete reality; visitors need to be jolted. Introduces deception and concealment. #USHMM about 3 hours ago from web

Building an iconic structure can be positive by creating a publicly recognizable building, but can also detract from the message. #USHMM about 3 hours ago from web

How does #USHMM architecture magnify or restrict the stories? Need to balance but not overshadow. about 3 hours ago from web

It was great to learn more about the Architect James Ingo Freed and his desire for the Holocaust Museum’s architecture to serve as a “resonator of memory.” The multitude of narratives that exist in terms of the space, exhibits and history provide a rich amount of content for such an effort. The concept is tremendous; a guided tour of a space or exhibits in which participants Twitter their thoughts, reflections and questions using a common hashtag (e.g., #USHMM).

As a result, my focus here is not the content, but rather the structure of the tour and future ways in which emerging technologies, such as Twitter, may be better integrated into the overall experience.

Structural suggestions

As was previously mentioned, 11 visitors and 3 USHMM staff members took a short tour of the museum. This mix of visitors and staff worked well for the trial, however, here are a few recommendations and modifications that might be helpful in creating better exchanges amongst participants and followers both within the physical and online spaces. First let’s focus on the structure of the group:

• Facilitator — Subject matter expert that leads the tour. This person provides the background and history of the space and exhibits while posing questions to the group and answering any that may came up during the course of the tour.

• Moderators — Museum staff that monitor listening posts for the tour in social networks, such as Twitter, surfacing questions that may come up from outside followers and sharing thoughtful Tweets made by participants of the tour.

• Subject Matter Experts — Either museum staff or external experts (e.g., professors, architects, policy makers, Holocaust survivors, et cetera) that can lend background and deeper dimensions to the conversations.

• Participants — This includes both participants and online followers; individuals interested in the space, exhibits or experience and are willing to share and consume content via Twitter, Facebook or other social networks, as well as respond to and engage their networks.

• Influencers — Advocates, members of the media, cultural elite or socially connected individuals that can use their channels of influence to magnify and/or extend the shelf-life of the experience.

Secondly, let’s focus on ways to create moments of exchange and interaction. As with any event it is important to construct norms and structural devices that ensure an engaging user experience. The very act of asking participants to engage technology can automatically generate barriers that prevent interaction with others and the physical space. Therefore it is important to ensure that nobody falls too deeply into the rabbit hole of technology.

This is where moderators play a critical role in connecting participants with one another, as well as with online followers. Since participants are actively listening and processing information in order to post content to their social networks; moderators serve to tether the various groups together. Some tactics to combat the rabbit hole include: asking questions to participants; posting content for followers (e.g., trivia questions, photos, quotes, et ctera); and surfacing questions from followers and posts by tour participants.

Finally, a few on-site and online technology recommendations. Staff members in the role of moderators should be equipped with Tablet PCs or light weight Netbooks running Tweetdeck or other Twitter client. Using a client such as Tweetdeck allows them to more easily follow the hashtag of the tour/event (e.g., #event), enable grouping of the tour participants and provide the ability to post tweets or status updates as needed. And, if possible, wireless access should be provided for all of the participants to ensure better connectivity.

As for online, I would create a destination on the USHMM website that allowed online followers to orient themselves with the space or exhibits while also providing a canvas for user generated content coming from tours to live (e.g., main column could include professional images along with best of tweets or status message and user photos and the left column could include a real-time stream of the tour and related links and content). The possibilities are limitless, for example with the emergence of geotagging in social network/services, coupled with geomarkers within the physical environment the ability for greater interaction with the space, other visitors and the world will emerge.

I’m looking forward to seeing more museums, organizations and tours leveraging emerging technologies in similar ways. Again, I want to thank the staff of the USHMM for the opportunity to participate in this experiment and commend them for the exciting work they are doing, especially the ways in which they are looking to combine and enrich the online and offline experiences of their visitors. Great work!

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Full disclosure: I first visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Musuem (USHMM) six years ago during the inaugural year of our Human Rights: A Culture and Crisis course at Georgetown University and have been in love with the space ever since. At the time we took 100+ undergraduates on an unguided tour of the space and it was a moving experience for everyone involved. The design of the space — along with the stories — had a tremendous impact on me. Since that experience I have used the design and architecture of the building in several lectures about the ways in which physcial space and materials can help tell a story and create engaging, interactive experiences.

This decision has added to an already ongoing international debate over the role and responsibilities of companies doing business around the globe (e.g., Yahoo in China). In the course of their business dealings are they suppose to safeguard an individual’s freedom or the sovereignty of a state? As the author, Noam Cohen, points out:

As much as any country, however, Egypt illustrates the push-me-pull-you nature of technology under an oppressive government. Young people flock to Facebook, in a way I never could have imagined. For the largest Arab country in the world, it was a way for the educated elite to reach out to one another and to those who had left the country for an even more elite education.

As more and more companies offer their goods and services globally they will be confronted with this question. An important question to answer, however, there is another underlying question in this article which should be explored as well; how do you resolve freedoms or rights that come into conflict with each other as a result of using technology? As noted:

It is easy to get swept up in the utopianism embedded in new technologies. That we will be more politically engaged because of the organizing and fund-raising tools of social networking; that we will think greater thoughts now that anyone can have access to nearly everything ever written; that our tribal hatreds will melt away as the world recognizes that we genuinely are all connected.

Even those like Mr. Ganesan, who see technology abused, are cautiously hopeful. “Technologies do not hold people accountable. They give people the tools to hold people accountable.” But he added: “We believe as a human rights group that the Internet can have an opening and transforming effect.”

Technologies do not hold people accountable, nor is technology necessarily held accountable either. It can be abused. Technology is inherently neutral. It is neither good nor evil, however, it may be used to accomplish both. Yes, technologies such as social networks and their ability to organize and fund-raise are transforming our world, but it does so in a manner impartial to the community or cause it is being used to promote.

Whether it is a social network supporting Barack Obama for president or a video game promoting the ethnic cleansing of America by white supremacists the technology doesn’t care. Again, technology is inherently neutral. We see social networks used to connect and inform, but they are also used for surveillance and misinformation. So while it can be rightly argued that GPS is a conduit to the freedom of information, the duality of the technology must be recognized as well.

As GPS illuminates the world around us it also locates us in that world. The iPhone may lead a person turn-by-turn to a restaurant in downtown Manhattan or Mumbai, but it is also capable of leading another person, or even a government, to the individual holding that iPhone. As a result, freedom of information can quickly come into conflict with one’s right to privacy.

What type of safeguards are we expecting — or even demanding — to be embedded in these technologies to ensure our rights? How do we resolve the conflict between two freedoms? Unfortunately these questions are rarely examined, or even asked, because the pace at which technology is created and subsequently adopted doesn’t afford the time for reflection.

Too often, as both individuals and society, we simply ignore these tensions. Instead of examining these issues it is far easier to shake our iPhones and hope we hit a culinary jackpot. However, unlike the Magic 8-ball, technology won’t answer these questions for us. We need to be more reflective with emerging technologies and hold companies, such as Apple, accountable to individuals.

In the end we can’t complain about our freedoms or rights being taken away from us when we, and others, are freely giving them away.

Presiding Judge Monica Weinberg de Roca said Tuesday that Simon Bikindi used a public address system to tell Hutus to exterminate Tutsi “snakes” and wrote hate-filled propaganda in his lyrics.

“You have abused your stature as a well-known and popular artist … and an important figure in the Interahamwe movement by using your influence to incite genocide,” she said. The Interahamwe were militants from the Hutu ethnic majority.

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They often used radio as a means of urging Hutu civilians to kill their Tutsi neighbors and direct the slaughter. Bikindi’s songs called on Hutus to remember the suffering under the Tutsi monarchy and urged Hutus to remain united against the “Tutsi enemy.”

To place this in a larger context, during the Rwandan genocide there was a debate within the Clinton Administration as to whether or not to jam the radio waves to stop the spread of violence. The airwaves were being used to target and kill the Tutsi. At the time only the United States had the technology to block the radio transmissions. It was decided, however, that a state’s sovereignty was paramount and that the U.S. should not interfere with the Rwandan airwaves.

In fact, the United States refused to share the technology with other countries or even the United Nations in order for them to intervene. What if the messages of hate — and later the lists of people to kill — being read over the airwaves of the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) had been stopped? How many lives could have been saved? In retrospect one wonders whether or not the international community would allow the same decision to be made today.