The Macroscope and the Immersive Turn: Finding the Value Proposition of History in an Era of Big Data

Historians are debating scale as never before. Some, pointing to transformations in the life and social sciences, argue for the use “big data” to trace large-scale long-term patterns. Others stress the ways digital sources allow us to shift between microlevel and macrolevel observation and analysis, using work at each end of the spectrum to leverage new understandings at the other. I argue that we will be most effective in staking out a discipline-specific contribution to scholarly progress if we combine new digital affordances with new insights into the traditional core of historians’ craft: multi-dimensional knowledge accumulation that enables critical evaluation of sources and creative cross-usage among them. What have historians gained in the past from immersive learning, especially place-based immersive learning? What can immersive learning offer in a revolutionized information landscape?