Yeah I'm not terribly worried about a shut down of anything - unless people are unwilling to begin transitions. In the LCD situation, I expect we'll simply transition to oLED technology. Copper wiring to fiber optics or wireless transmissions.

Thankfully aluminum is still pretty far away on the "exhaustability" spectrum, and aluminum is also pretty easy to reclaim from wastes. Copper is something we put deep in the earth and wind into tiny knots on circuit boards. Reclaiming it is a slightly more complex task.

In terms of the relevance to this article, I'd suggest that if anyone is upgrading their infrastructure to be current with technology, upgrade to fiber. It shows you're willing to make the transition to a new technology and you'll be prepared when the resources become scarce. And honestly, if someone's upgrading from Cat5 to Cat5e or Cat6... well, it's very rare anyone actually needs that. You might as well make a real upgrade, instead of changing equipment over to better shielded, better constructed, higher tested... same material lines.

There aren't many places in the world that actually utilize Cat6 (or fully utilize Cat5e) in their places of business, and in most of those places, you're better off using fiber anyway.

Be technology conscious.
Be environmentally conscious.

Well we can reclaim them later, or shift now to technology and materials that are superior and more readily renewable anyway - and often at a lower cost; never hitting that point where "tomorrow's prices" somehow make exploiting a material further worth our time.

(then again, I could just be looking too deeply)

I kind of took this article more to be suggesting that we should be looking at newer data transmission technologies and materials - not so much continuing in a line, all involving copper.

There are some recent reports released stating that *really* common elements used in technology are about to become exhausted resources - most in the next 10 years, but some as soon as 4 years from now.

For instance, at our current rate of consumption, Indium will be exhausted in four years. Indium is used for current generation LCD displays, among other things.
Gold and copper are in the same boat. The US already has closed down most of its gold mines, and all of its copper mines because they're not economically viable to mine for anymore. Predictions put gold and copper at exhausted in around 10 years.
And none of these projections take into account population growth or new technology demands. It's only at "current consumption rates".

In other words:

Should we be looking to upgrade cabling to fiber optics or other mediums for transmission of data, so that we can begin reclaiming copper to be used in more essential capacities?

Too many comments, might have been said, don't care, but offering this tidbit: GDP for Ethiopia is just under $65 billion US, over a population of 75 million, that averages out to about $867 per capita annual production. I'm sure the average working citizen makes around $600 or less. 3 cents per cup of coffee for a coffee bean farm.. Man I won't even do the calculations, but I'm sure just one cubic meter of coffee beans makes a hundred times that much coffee. So let's say that a 16 oz cup of black coffee goes for $1.25 at Starbucks (thats what it is where I live - Tacoma, Wa.), you'd get over 2000 cups of coffee (generously) from a cubic meter of coffee at a rate of 1 cubic meter beans = 100 cubic meters coffee. 2000 16oz cups = $2500 for Starbucks in gross income I'm sure the 3 cents a cup estimate by those people is at an 8 oz estimate, but to be generous, I'll estimate the coffee farmers' gains by 16oz cups. 2000 16oz cups = $60.00 for a farmer That's $60.00 US per cubic meter. A cubic meter is about 28 bushels. That's over $2 a bushel. US CORN PRICES PER BUSHEL ARE $2.05. AND THATS IN THE US, ETHIOPIA'S ECONOMY ISN'T AS STABLE AS OURS. THE DUDES THAT MAKE THE COFFEE CUPS FOR STARBUCKS ARE MAKING LESS THAN 1 CENT PER CUP OF COFFEE Simply, if you raise the price of goods to Ethiopia, you risk creating an economy bubble. The costs are so low and the profit so high, that everyone goes into farming coffee beans in Ethiopia. All of a sudden, no one is mining, no one is teaching classes, no one is doing government paper work, because none of it pays enough. I'm game to improving economies, but someone please give the idiots in these economic organizations for global prosperity a lesson in basic economics! The world just doesn't work that way. Instead of paying them 2 or 3 more cents per cup of coffee, why don't we ask for Starbucks to donate 1 cent for every cup of coffee to building national infrastructure in Ethiopia. Then they can reduce the cost of shipping coffee and improve the safety of their merchandise, allowing more to get to market at lower cost, increasing profit. And infrastructure in those countries improves other industries like mining, other agricultural sectors and textiles. Honestly... don't worry about the coffee industry WHEN THEIR CHILDREN ARE STILL DYING OF STARVATION OR SHOOTING EACH OTHER WITH IMPORTED COLD-WAR WEAPONS BECAUSE OF A LACK OF BASIC POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC STABILITY.