Contrary to appearances, we confirm that this article is indeed written in 2024.
If Japan has, probably rightly, an image of a very technologically advanced country thanks to its video game industry, its robots, or even its sinks of the future which also wash smartphones, an announcement from the country’s Ministry of the Economy is came to emphasize that it was necessary, however, to make some reservations. Because from now on, and since January 22 of this year only, the country’s institutions will no longer be required to store their data on physical media, of which floppy disks still represent a significant part in the country.
A slightly outdated system
It was time to move on: the first floppy disks, or floppy disks, were marketed more than 50 years ago, in 1971 and, although they have since seen improvements, it has been a long time since anyone dedicated to their development. To the point that Sony, the last manufacturer still producing them, stopped doing so in 2011.
It’s quite easy to understand why: the most efficient of these floppy disks cannot exceed a storage capacity of more than 1.44 MB, and even their direct successor, the CD-ROM, has also been out of fashion for years. Beyond their outdated appearance and above all their usefulness which is increasingly difficult to defend, the devices capable of reading them are also no longer really marketed. Even if Windows 10, at the insistence of some users, had agreed to support them.
This has not stopped most Japanese public administrations from continuing to use them until now, not only out of habit, but also because the law required it. Until January 22, therefore, it was obligatory to use floppy disks or CD-ROMs in many areas.
There ” war on floppy disks »
It’s easy to imagine that the archives of some Japanese public buildings must today be filled with hundreds of thousands of floppy disks and CD-ROMs, and that this situation is probably not the most efficient for everyday operations. To the point that, in August 2022, the country’s minister of digital transformation, Taro Kono, simply declared the “ war on floppy disks “. Because before the recent reform, nearly 2,000 government procedures required the use of material supports, including energy or regulations regarding the manufacture of weapons.
As surprising as it may seem, the news has not been received positively by everyone, and some officials in the country, notably at the Ministry of Justice, are reluctant to make the transition to the cloud. And for the moment, they are not forced to do so: they just have the choice to abandon floppy disks.
If the case of Japan is particularly striking, they are not the only ones to be slow to abandon this technology. So, until 2019, the US Air Force also used floppy disks in its missile guidance systems.
Source : Ars Technica
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