When it comes to forward-thinking technology, Japan often comes to mind.

But recently the tech-obsessed country has been fighting a battle against an outdated piece of 80’s nostalgia: the floppy disk.

Yes, that storage device first invented in 1971 and taken out of production in 2011 was a key piece of information containment for the Japanese government up until June of this year.

In fact, Japan had over 1,000 regulations that involved the use of floppy disks, despite the fact that the device can only hold mere megabytes of data – at best.

But that all changed at the midpoint of this year when Japan’s Digital Minister Taro Kono decided to spearhead the movement to take floppy disks out of rotation.

During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, it became clear that reliance on paper filling and outdated technology was a hindrance to the rollout of contact tracing apps and digital identification, tools that became especially important during that period.

The Digital Agency was set up in 2021 to push antiquated technology out of government, such as fax machines and floppy disks, with Kono taking the reins in August of 2022 after a failed bid at Prime Minister.

“We have won the war on floppy disks on June 28!” Kono told Reuters in a statement in early July.

Kono, who has over 2.5 million followers on X and has been vocal about wiping out fax machines and other analog technology in government, formerly headed the defense and foreign ministries as well as the COVID vaccine deployment.

Sony, a Japanese company, was the last organization to manufacture the disks, holding out until 2011. And though the country may have been highly reliant on the outdated technology, they aren’t the only one.

Many public organizations, governments, universities, and scientific experiments often rely on established tech in their system instead of staying up to date, even when the rest of the world has moved on.

For example, British Airways’ Boeing 747-400 fleet used floppy disks for its avionics software all the way to their retirement in 2020.

Also, the US military stopped using floppy disks to control its nuclear weapons only in 2019.

At least now the people of Japan can rest easy knowing the war on old tech has been won.

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