Japan finally says goodbye to floppy disks, ends government use of legacy tech

When you think of Japan, you might visualize ultra-modern bullet trains and self-cleaning toilets. But the other side of the story is the country was using floppy drives for government procedures at a time when people might even take cloud storage for granted.

Reuters reports that the nation has finally declared victory against floppy drivers by eliminating all 1,034 regulations governing their use with one environmental limitation related to vehicle recycling.

Japan's Digital Agency, which was set up during the COVID-19 pandemic to boost Japan's digital infrastructure, finished the job by the middle of last month. The agency was created after attempts to roll out nationwide testing and vaccination revealed that the Japanese government was still using outdated tech and paper filing.

"We have won the war on floppy disks on June 28!" Japan's Digital Minister Taro Kono told the publication in a statement. After assuming office in 2022, Kono raged war against floppy disks and took to his social media handle.

Floppy disks relied on magnetic storage to read and write data. They were quite popular during the 1970s and 1990s when they were primarily used to transfer data between non-networked computers.

The legacy tech started declining about two and a half decades ago when internet-connected computers and other storage methods became more common. In 1998, Apple became one of the early movers toward a floppy-less future by launching the iMac G3.

Other companies joined the bandwagon in the following years. In 2001, internal documents revealed Intel wanted to pull the plug on floppy drives, PC World stopped stocking them in 2007, and Sony with about 70% of the 3.5-inch floppy market in 2010 announced it would end all floppy sales.

Source: Reuters