If you read between the lines news from the rare metals commodities markets might have you thinking the march of technology has ground to a halt. A recent piece in the Financial Times flagged a collapse in the price of obscure metals to their lowest level in years. Ruthenium, Iridium and Rhodium are all taking a nose dive of the world markets. These are three of those ‘hard to get at’ metals sitting in a deserted corner of the periodic table which are vital components in the machines which run our lives. Computer hard drives; smart phone screens and flat screen TVs, to name a small few, all depend on tiny slivers of these metals to make our world go around.