Japan

If you’re in your 20s, there’s a good chance that you don’t know what a floppy disk is. And while there are many different iterations of the floppy disk, the 3.5-inch variant is probably going to be one of the most recognizable, providing, at its peak, a whopping 1.44 megabytes of storage space.

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And while most of the world has long moved past the floppy disk in favor of CDs, DVDs, flash drives, and even SSDs, it appears that Japan was, in some capacity, still using floppy disks until just recently.

A new era begins

The news comes from Reuterssharing that Japan’s government has finally “eliminated the use of floppy disks in all its systems.” Now, as you can imagine, this is a huge move forward for the country, and it was only possible thanks to Japan’s Digital Agency getting rid of over 1,000 regulations surrounding their use.

Japan’s Digital Agency was created just a few years ago with the sole purpose of moving the country’s digital efforts forward. It might come as a surprise, since Japan is known for being a technology mecca to some, but the country’s inner workings are far behind other well established countries, with some government agencies still heavily relying on fax machines to carry on with daily work.

And while civilians will most likely never see the underbelly of this vast beast, they will surely experience the slow pace and complexity involved when dealing with literal moving paperwork. Of course, while purging floppy disk use is a monstrous victory for Japan, there are sure to be many other pain points along the way as the country attempts to integrate more technology into its government and civilian sectors.