On Tuesday, German publishing icon Brockhaus announced that the lastest, 21st edition of their 24-piece printed encyclopedia is the last one they will market the traditional way, via bookstores and subscriptions. From April 15th, the entire Brockhaus encyclopedia will be available online, for free, paid for by advertising.

This move hails the end of a legend and German household brand. And it shows that companies who fail to adapt to the sea change in media consumption and access to knowledge will have a very hard time surviving. Brockhaus is at least 4 years late and literally signed its surrender to Wikipedia. Ironically, on the same day, Spiegel Online launched a new knowledge portal with Bertelsmann and Wikipedia that joins content from Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia Wissen.de and Spiegel’s archives. They call Spiegel Wissen the “next generation encyclopedia”. Given Spiegel Online’s huge daily traffic it will be a success, no doubt.

The next victim to digitalisation of technologies, of life, is Polaroid. They have been making instant films and cameras for 60 years now and became an industry and cultural icon too. Now, they are stopping film production for both professional and amateur use and are laying off people, inevitably. I wonder how photo artists who work with the 7,9 x 9,1 cm amateur format like German photographer Stefanie Schneider will continue to work without. And even our team at Hotwire will miss the quick pics which we used in our graduat recruiting workshops to create a bit of a casting atmosphere…

I’m taking bets and good guesses on who’s going to be the next to lay down in this race of old economy against 01010110110.