The year 2000 is not very far ahead - only five years. It should
not be hard to forecast what will happen between now and then,
because the technologies that will be in practical use then should
all be at least in embryo existence now. There has been a historical trend for the mining industry to
work ever more difficult and ever more marginal deposits. There
are clearly a few exceptions and major discoveries, but the
industry is becoming heavily dependent, at both the exploration
and the mining stages, on technological innovation to retain
acceptable profit margins. With the new exploration and mining technologies come
requirements for additional computing support. Computing
technology further allows the potential integration of a wide
variety of different types of data to help the explorationist to
build and test exploration strategies, or to help the miner to
design and schedule mining operations.