The new Japanese Minister of Digital, Taro Kono, intends to launch an all-out war against a rather particular enemy: floppy disks. Indeed, the politician wants to get rid of these outdated media which are still used for around 1900 government procedures in Japan. Nonsense in his eyes, at the time of cloud storage.
Japan, the birthplace of many cutting-edge technology companies such as Sony and Panasonic, still uses technologies that have been outdated for years in its government institutions. Indeed, and as the new Japanese Digital Minister Taro Kono pointed out, the use of diskettes is still necessary in no less than 1900 official procedures.
Nonsense in the age of cloud storage and USB flash drives. Having just taken office, Taro Kono intends to throw away the CDs, MiniDiscs and other diskettes used by government services. He also announced that he was going to war against floppy disks this Tuesday during a press conference.
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Japan wants to get rid of floppy disks
This somewhat special crusade is obviously part of the current government’s desire to modernize Japanese public services and institutions. For several months now, Taro Kono has repeatedly attacked the archaic methods of Japanese bureaucracy. For example, he pointed the still massive use in 2022 of fax machines and Hanko, the traditional Japanese stamps.
“I’m looking to get rid of the fax machine, and I still intend to do so,” he recently said. It must be recognized that the use of diskettes within Japanese institutions must end, especially since Sony, one of the main manufacturers of diskettes in the past, officially stopped production more than eleven years ago!
Note however that the Japanese archipelago was not the only one to still use diskettes within these services and public institutions. In 2016, the American army used floppy disks to guide its nuclear missiles… And it was not until 2019 that the Ministry of Defense officially abandoned floppy disks, after 50 years of good and loyal service. In addition, it was not until the release of Windows 11 that Microsoft gradually removed any reference to the floppy drive.
Source : Gizmodo
