Japan declares war on floppy disks

Japan’s Digital Ministry has declared war on classic and old floppy disk after acknowledging that there are still 1,900 government forms and documents that continue to rely on this and other outdated information storage technologies.

Floppy disks, CDs and MiniDiscs are still used in Japan as the usual support for information by the Public Administration

And it is that despite being considered one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world in the country of the Rising Sun, the presence of this pendrive’s nineties antecedent in terms of ease of transporting information is still very large.

Taro Kono, recently appointed new holder of the portfolio of the Japanese Digital Ministry, has declared this particular floppy war through his Twitter account, pointing out the existence of around 1,900 types of government and administrative procedures that still require the use of floppy disks, CDs and MiniDiscs.

Magnetic disks, developed in 1964, evolved in terms of size, density and capacities, being the most popular 3.5-inch floppy disks emerged in 1982 and that even at the beginning of the 2000s they still had read/write units in the new computer models, although they were gradually losing ground to the physical storage medium that continues to be the reference: the USB-A pen drive.

The effort to modernize Japan by the ministry headed by Taro Kono is now focused on updating the format in which it is still customary to send forms and applications today: recorded on a floppy disk. Kono confirms that he has the support in this initiative of Fumio Kishida, the country’s prime minister, in a new phase of technological modernization. Previously, the objectives to end this obsolescence have focused in the fax and in the seals and tampons which are traditionally used to seal carts and documents.

curiously Sony, a leading manufacturer of floppy disks, stopped making them 11 years ago. and even in the United States, the use of floppy disks was already eliminated from the Department of Defense in 2019. In recent times, its use has become more recreational than anything else, as has happened with the Flopptron, a peculiar symphony orchestra made up of 512 floppy drives and 16 hard drives.