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Element extinction

An article at Asimov's makes for interesting reading. Robert Silverburg talks about the death of gallium, pointing out a report by a materials chemist at Germany’s University of Augsburg, who is predicting the "death" of a number of elements.

Obviously, death here doesn't mean the elements are no longer available. It rather refers to supply being unable to keep up with demand. Additionally, recovery and recycling of these elements becomes more difficult and economically unfeasible as they are built into devices and distributed worldwide.

There was an original New Scientist article concerning this as well. It's been reproduced at Nova, and you can read the reproduction here.

In the case of gallium and indium, there is at least one opposing view [pdf] from the Indium Corporation.

My personal feeling is that if we need these elements, we will either develop better extraction/recovery methods, find replacements, or learn to synthesize them. After all, "economically unfeasible" doesn't mean we can't do it, just that we have to try harder :)