# An academic reality show: 'PredictionX' brings together faculty from across the University to discuss the human need to know the future November 13, 2015 - [ News ](/news-categories/news) > In a Science Center lecture hall at Harvard, anthropologist Rowan Flad heats a hot metal poker and touches it to a goat scapula. > > The ancient Chinese, he explains, used a ritual similar to this as a means of divination. As early as 4000 B.C., they attempted to predict the future by reading the patterns created after the bone cracked from the poker’s heat. > > But nobody could have predicted that “oracle bones” would be recreated millennia later, for a digital camera, in the name of Internet-enabled education. > > That’s one small part of “[PredictionX,](http://harvardx.harvard.edu/blog/predictionx-uncovered)” a [HarvardX](https://www.edx.org/school/harvardx) offering covering the history of prediction. Created by astrophysicist Alyssa Goodman, the modular learning experience traces humanity’s effort to understand the future — from ancient rituals to the scientific revolution to modern predictive simulations. Read More: See also:- [ Prediction ](/subject-area/prediction) - [ 2015 ](/year/2015) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)