07/07/2024 – 7:10
For a large part of the planet, floppy disks are a thing of the past. It’s been many years since other forms of storage have turned the object into museum pieces. However, in Japan, this leap has not happened completely and only now, in 2024, the country has managed to retire the object.
Especially in the Japanese government, floppy disks continued to be used frequently, with some regulations even requiring their use.
According to Reuters, by mid-June, the National Digital Agency had eliminated most of the regulations governing the use of floppy disks. By June, however, a significant portion of documents sent to the government had to be sent via floppy disk.
That was until the arrival of the new Minister of Digital Affairs, Taro Kono. In 2021, Kono made a commitment to declare an end to the old storage format. On Wednesday last week, the minister announced: “We won the war against floppy disks on June 28.”
The elimination of the old data storage method is part of a kind of technological reform that Kono began three years ago, precisely because of the advances in technology. In other respects, however, the Japanese remain stuck in the 1980s and 1990s.
The effort represents an attempt by the country to progress in the digital ranking spectrum. In 2023, Japan ranked 32nd in the IMD World Competitiveness Ranking – which can be considered bad for a nation considered a benchmark in the technological universe.
HISTORIC
Floppy disks were created in the 1960s and gained popularity over the years. As other forms of technology accelerated, production declined. Sony, the last manufacturer of the device, stopped producing it in 2011. The devices have a low storage capacity and still require the use of a specific reader to be decoded.
The information is from the newspaper The State of S. Paulo.
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