While watching TV, I came across a short feature on floppy disks. The story was that floppy disks, which are considered to have outlived their usefulness in modern society, are still a very important item in certain industries. Floppy disks are rarely used today, but they are still used in a few places, such as embroidery machines and early Boeing 747 jumbo jets, which would not function without them.The save icons on computers still use many of these floppy disk icons, and they have subconsciously entered our consciousness. However, the U.S. Department of Defense has announced a policy to stop using floppy disks as soon as possible, and their existence is about to disappear from the world. The misdirected money transfers that have made headlines in Japan in the past were also caused by these floppy disks.It was very interesting to see that even the generation that does not know about floppy disks can recognize the preserved icons that we perceive as images without thinking and are linked to images in our brains, as if the floppy disks are still alive like ghosts. Furthermore, the so-called "bug screen" of the Famicom (NES), a typical Japanese subculture, was reproduced using stencils. The double combination of nostalgia for the digital age and modern nostalgia was expressed.It has a new cultural value that links technology and instinct, and it has a symbolic meaning of the times, represents technological progress, or serves as a bridge between the past and the present.
