The floppy disk is more than half a century old. The Japanese digital minister has now declared war on her.
When the floppy disk hit the market in 1971, it was a sensation.
The fax machine is an old cultural technique that certain offices still dominate. Think of the beginning of the corona pandemic, when doctors and laboratories had to fax some of their Covid 19 reports to the Federal Office of Public Health (BAG). Again and again, the BAG was exposed to malice and shakes of the head, just because there was a problem with digitization.
In Japan, an ancient storage medium is now getting the better of it: the floppy disk. For the younger generation, an explanation: the floppy disk – which can be translated as “wobbly disc” – is a magnetic data carrier. This square floppy disk used to be inserted into a computer’s drive and the data stored could be read. However, many may not have had such a diskette in their hands for years. Even if the storage medium celebrated its 50th anniversary last year.
Developed in the 1960s, it came onto the market in 1971: At that time, IBM sold the first computers with floppy disks as removable media, which were still quite large at 8 inches. They could store 242,944 bytes or letters.
Nevertheless, the disk and similar media such as the CD or the lesser-known minidisc are still required for around 1,900 administrative procedures in Japan. They must go, Japan’s Digital Minister Taro Kono wrote in a Twitter post on Wednesday.
Digital Minister declares a war on floppy discs.
There are about 1900 government procedures that require business community to use discs, ie floppy disc, CD, MD, etc to submit applications and other forms. Digital Agency is to change those regulations so you can use online.— KONO Taro (@konotaromp) August 31, 2022
However, legal hurdles are making it difficult for modern technologies such as cloud storage to be adopted for wider use within the bureaucracy, according to a presentation by the government’s digital task force on Tuesday Bloomberg reported. The group will review the regulations and plan to make suggestions for improvements by the end of the year. In addition, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida offered his full support.
American nuclear forces used floppy disks until 2019
Japan isn’t the only country struggling to say goodbye to the floppy disk. The American nuclear forces only approved the use of this storage medium in 2019. The American Court of Auditors objected to this in 2016. At the Pentagon, a command and control system ran on a Series 1 IBM computer, which dates back to the 1970s. 8-inch floppy disks were used as storage media. For example, the system was used to control ICBMs.
Now it remains to be seen how successful the Japanese digital minister Kono will be with his project. He also wanted to get his hands on the so-called Hanko stamp, which has been used to authenticate documents in Japan for centuries. But the seals are still widely used.
And who knows, you might still find one or two floppy disks in certain Swiss offices.