Floppy disks were a popular storage unit around the world decades ago after their creation in 1971, but they have been discontinued since 2011. However, their cessation of manufacture did not stop Japanese officials from continuing to use them until now, as the Japanese Digital Agency has recently abolished almost all the rules governing their use.
“We have won the war on floppy disks”
Floppy disks slow down any process due to their minimal storage capacity. Despite this, Japanese officials continued to use them due to tradition and to ensure that any procedure was well stored, because although documents could be stored in the cloud, their rules continued to allow the use of floppy disks.
This was a problem for the bureaucracy, since its storage space is ridiculously less than current technologies, such as hard drives, servers created to store files or CDs. Their capacity is so low that many floppy disks are not even capable of storing current images, since several weigh much more than the space they have.
For this reason, in mid-June the Digital Agency had already eliminated the 1,034 rules that regulated its use. Only one remains, related to vehicle recycling. This agency was formed in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, at a time when the government still used floppy disks to store evidence and information about the vaccine.
One of the main people responsible for the end of the floppy disk is Taro Kono, Minister of Digital Affairs. “We won the war on floppy disks on June 28!” told Reuters. The popular Japanese leader has not only extinguished floppy disks, but is also committed to stopping the use of faxes and other analogue technologies in the Japanese administration.
The fact that floppy disks were still in use in 2024 proves that while Japan is very advanced in science and technology for certain issues — such as the fight against space pollution or the use of apps to detect pain in cats — in others it was stagnant.
Comments