Our effective history has its roots in The Three Landscapes Project - Stanford, from 2000. This takes in Michael Shanks's long-running collaboration with the arts company Brith Gof and its art directors Mike Pearson and Cliff McLucas. Early ideas behind this can be found in Michael's book Experiencing the Past from 1991.

Joseph Adler (of Instinct Corporation) and Michael Shanks tried out various pilots from 2003.

Michael enlisted the aid of Chris Witmore and Tim Webmoor, two of his PhD students, and the rest is here.