Abstract The topic of seismic anisotropy in exploration and exploitation has seen a great deal of progress in the past decade-and-a-half. The principal reason for this is the increased (and increasing) quality of seismic data, of the processing done to it, and of the interpretation expected from it. No longer an academic subject of little practical interest, it is now often viewed as one of the crucial factors which, if not taken into account, severely hampers our effective use of the data. The following brief overview is not intended to be exhaustive, since any such attempt would surely be incomplete. However, it does provide a high-level survey of the advances seen (at the end of this period) to be important by one who was closely involved, and it directly extrapolates this history to predict the future development of the topic.