The Globe and Mail reports in its Wednesday edition that gold miners have seen grades fall and fall, raising questions about the possibility of peak gold. A Bloomberg dispatch to The Globe says that in the late 1960s, mined gold came in at more than 10 grams a tonne on average. Nowadays, Barrick Gold sees the 1.32-gram-per-tonne grade in its reserves as something to boast about. One response to this progressively toughening environment is to invest in technology to make existing mines more productive. That is what Barrick plans with its announcement Monday that it will invest $100-million (U.S.) in a partnership with Cisco Systems to digitally reinvent its business. Data analytics, predictions of weather patterns, market prices and geology could help decide which parts of a pit to dig at any one time, the thinking goes. Barrick's executive chairman John Thornton is not the first boss to carry lessons from making cars -- another low-margin business -- into mining. Barrick should tread with care. The Bernstein analytic group in July examined a century of copper prices and costs to argue that miners' technological improvements are copied by rivals too quickly to provide any lasting advantage.