Dr. Dobb's Journal August 2002
Symbolism being what it is, the Fort Worth, Texas, skyline says a lot about Radio Shack, the city's most notable business — with the possible exception, of course, of Joe T. Garcia's Mexican Restaurant (http://www.joets.com/). Two decades ago, the twin towers of the Tandy Center, Radio Shack's corporate headquarters, dominated the cityscape, just as the company itself dominated the personal computer industry with its TRS-80 computers. Today, as a recent trip to Cowtown made plain, the Tandy towers are dwarfed by a thicket of high-rise buildings, and Radio Shack is no longer a player in the personal computer market, other than as a retailer for former competitors such as Compaq.
But perhaps more than any major U.S. corporation, Radio Shack has exhibited a surprising ability to reinvent itself. Over the years, Radio Shack has hawked everything from ladies fashions and garden supplies to leather goods, automobile tires, and pots and pans. Oh yes, and electronics. The citizen-band radio craze fueled the company's growth in the 1970s, followed by computers in the 1980s. Then in the 1990s, Radio Shack switched to personal communications and wireless phones, and today sells more cellular phones than any other U.S. company. Still, considering that worldwide cellular phone sales are plummeting (down 3.7 percent to 93.8 million in the first quarter, compared to 97.4 million last year, according to Gartner Dataquest), you have to wonder what Radio Shack's next incarnation will be.
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From Borland to Inprise and back to Borland, Borland is another company that's been able to reinvent itself. After years of going mano a mano with Microsoft on everything from compilers to spreadsheets (remember Quattro?), Borland has nestled into a sweet spot between .NET and Linux, with development tools supporting both platforms. On one hand, for instance, Borland announced at its recent developer's conference that C++Builder, JBuilder, and Delphi will support both .NET development and third-party technologies, making it easier to support nonMicrosoft technologies when building .NET apps. Better yet, you will be able to use old C++/Java/Delphi code in .NET. On the other hand, both Kylix 3 and C++Builder for Linux are due out the middle of the year.
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In conversation with longtime DDJ reader John Haase, the discussion frivolously turned to the greatest inventions of the 20th century. John dismissed my vote for duct tape, saying it was overused, trite, and, doggone it, he wasn't buying me any more beer. Then, suggesting he'd already bought too much beer, John proffered plastic garbage bags. Right, as if that's any better than duct tape.
Okay, so we were both off base. One answer is self-checkout, the means by which retail stores are reinventing themselves. Self-checkout kiosks are popping up everywhere, from gas pumps and grocery stores to libraries and department stores. Scan your purchase, pay via cash, credit, or debit, and forget about uncaring or chatty cashiers. Of course, the naive among us might expect that a grocery store that has replaced human cashiers with an equivalent number of self-checkout stations might offer discounts to encourage their use. But no, that's too much to expect.
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Of course, retail point-of-sale isn't the only place where business is being reinvented. Union Pacific Railroad, for example, is discontinuing the use of engineers aboard trains that are being moved around switching yards at 21 major terminals and 40 satellite yards. Instead, "engineers" will strap on remote-control harnesses and walk beside trains, which then follow the engineers around the yard like obedient dogs.
As you might expect, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers has filed suit to prohibit the operation of remote-controlled locomotives by untrained engineers, pointing to the recent derailment of a remote-controlled train near Romeoville, Illinois, as a reason why human engineers are needed. Union Pacific management has countered by saying that remote-controlled trains have been used in Canada for a decade with a favorable safety record, and that train accidents occur even with human engineers. At this point, remote-controlled cross-country trains aren't being planned, although the technology for such schemes does exist.
Jonathan Erickson
editor-in-chief
jerickson@ddj.com