To your scattered blocks, go...

A long time ago, far, far away (light can travel more than 200 trillion miles in 34 years - that counts as far, far away) there was a small mine nestled in the shadow of weather-beaten hills in outback Queensland. This mine, unbeknownst to it, was missing out on the latest and greatest in fashion accessories for mines and miners. 

That accessory? The block...

Now blocks and blockiness was not entirely new but it seemed, like many fashion trends, the world was suddenly enamoured of, well, blocks. To the little Queensland mine (well may not so little) this obsession was unusual and unwanted. After all, it was a profitable operation and had been for years, churning out concentrates and metal for decades. What benefit  could these blocks possibly bring?

The little mine had been born and raised without blocks. It’s memories consisted of hand drawn sections and plans, faithfully reproduced and preserved. It’s mineralisation was defined by individual calculations relying on geological knowledge, pencil, calculator and planimeter. It’s stopes were designed from 2.5m ring sections, each painstakingly interpolated by hand, with ore boundaries slowly sweeping across the vellum in majestic paths. 

And there was not a block to be seen. 

And then came... a proliferation of computers.  A cacophony of digital flunkies with whirring discs and screaming fans and flashing lights and dazzling screens. 

“Welcome your new servants” the mine was told. “They will bring a new prosperity, all in a paper-free world”. Oh... sorry... we forgot to mention... these new servants only speak one language - blockish. The language of the blocks.

And thus came the planet of the blocks.

If a traveller from that distant land 200 trillion miles away could visit us today, they would not recognise our mining worlds. Even the conservative Queensland mine in our story succumbed to the blocky domination of those digital servants (?)

Today, blocks are ubiquitous. They’ve come to dominate our thoughts and practices.  We estimate resources using blocks.  Those blocks become fodder for optimisations and designs and schedules. Why... I’ve even seen those blocks slavishly followed, with their right-angle edges, as ore mark-outs for grade control.

The block, once a servant, has become our new master.  It’s paradigm blinkers thought and frames questions. It’s shape and uniform packing has invaded and conquered past practices - good and bad. 

Yes, children, once upon a time, we could build and operate mines... with out blocks!

Blocks are a construct. Units of volume we use to represent geometry in the digital world. And I think this is a problem. To understand why, let’s ask the question ‘why blocks’? That’s the sort of question I like to ask on a lazy Sunday afternoon. A question that challenges so-called ‘standard practice’. I find there are revelations and opportunities lurking within those places everyone accepts without a glance. 

To understand the ‘why blocks’ question we need to travel back in time (and space) to the world of early computers. By today’s standards we wouldn’t even call them computers. Their limited processing ability and memory measured in bytes or (shock) kilobytes are hard for us to recall. Yet, it’s these ‘features’ of those early machines that, in part, gave rise to the world of blocks.  

A regular cube or even rectangular prism is computationally tractable. As a unit to represent volume blocks are easy to manipulate and we mere humans can simply visualise them.  The 3D block is an outgrowth of that ancient staple of the engineering world - graph paper.  So, if you are programming a computer with limited capabilities it’s only natural that blocks were the go-to solution.  In those days, all blocks were created equal so you stored dimensions once and one-time only, saving memory.  A group of blocks was thus similar to a set of points. You only needed to invoke their ‘blockiness’ when whatever calculation you were performing was volume-dependent (like kriging).  The block we visualise in software today only assumed full time 3-dimensions when we started looking at them (a bit like quantum collapse, a very solipsistic perspective). 

It’s entirely understandable and reasonable for blocks to form the basis of models and estimates... in the 1960s,1970s and even 2000. My question is - do the same reasons stand today? Do we still need to be block-slaves? Remember, there was a world before blocks.  

I can imagine a world without blocks and with computerised estimation and evaluation.  It’s a weird world by the standard practices of today. It resembles a hybrid cross of pre-digital techniques with modern 3D visualisation.  

And it all starts with something I like to call ‘virtual models’. This isn’t an entirely new concept but I wonder, if like the blocks of the 1980’s, the time has come to embrace virtual models.  

What is a virtual model? It’s a model that only exists when it is needed. The volume and estimate are completed ‘on the fly’ so to speak, when someone expresses interest in a region. The virtual model is completely scalable from metres to kilometres.  A scalability that is inherent in the specification of the model itself.  The ‘model’ is a mathematical construct evaluated using the available data and specified parameters. In this, it resembles the implicit models we are more familiar with today - the difference? It explicitly includes grade. And no blocks.  

This block-less world has the potential to release value and flexibility - more so of coupled with artificial intelligence I suspect. I can see intelligent design tools combining virtual models with system capability specifications to find constantly evolving ‘optimal’ solutions. And, freed from the tyranny of blocks, those tools would ultimately be driven by  the real geometry of the rocks, the real geometry of the ore forming minerals.

So my software developing friends and colleagues, I reckon it’s time to start questioning your assumptions. Why do we need blocks? What past practices - before the world of blocks - did we discard without considering the consequences? What new capabilities are freed when we can estimate irregular volumes at any scale from a virtualised set of specifications?

Science fiction? Yeah but so was the idea of a handheld universal communicator/sensor/scanner once upon a time....