Although Kono only announced plans to eradicate floppy disks from the government two years ago, it has been 20 years since floppy disks were in their prime and 53 years since they debuted. It was only in January 2024 that the
Japanese government stopped requiring physical media, like floppy disks and CD-ROMs, for 1,900 types of submissions to the government, such as business filings and submission forms for citizens.
The timeline may be surprising, considering that the last company to make floppy disks,
Sony, stopped doing so in 2011. As a storage medium, of course, floppies can't compete with today's options since most floppies max out at 1.44MB (2.88MB floppies were also available). And you'll be hard-pressed to find a modern system that can still read the disks. There are also basic concerns around the old storage format, such as Tokyo police
reportedly losing a pair of floppy disks with information on dozens of public housing applicants in 2021.
But Japan isn't the only government body with surprisingly recent ties to the technology. For example, one of the San Francisco Muni Metro light rail's train control systems uses software that
runs off floppy disks and plans to keep doing so until 2030. The
US Air Force used 8-inch floppies until 2019.
Outside of the public sector, floppy disks remain common in
numerous industries, including embroidery, cargo airlines, and CNC machines. We reported on
Chuck E. Cheese using floppy disks for its animatronics as recently as January 2023.
arstechnica.com
