SemiConscious Dot Org

You knew it was only a matter of time, but still, the sad news tugs at the heartstrings:

The venerable floppy disk, storage system of choice for computer users since the early 80’s, will soon be no more. Computer retail giant PC World has announced it will no longer stock the drives or computers that come with them installed. I’m sure it will only be a matter of time before the other computer megastores stop carrying them as well, at which point it will no longer be profitable for any company to continue producing them. The humble floppy will then be quietly dragged into the Recycle Bin of history.

True, with the advent of rewritable CD-roms, USB keychain drives, and external hard drives, the floppy had long since become obsolete. Still, it’s amazing that, in the world of technology, where obsolescence is measure in months if not weeks, the floppy disk has hung around, virtually unchanged, for over a quarter of a century.

I can still remember, as though it were yesterday, the joyous Christmas morning when I received my very first floppy drive. I knew that, from that day forward, I would inhabit a new world, one in which I didn’t have to wait 45 minutes while my Commodore 64 loaded Super Zaxxon from a tape cassette player. Any time I wanted to play video games, I merely had to load up that 5 1/4 inch bad boy, and I would be ready to blast the hell out of aliens in 1-2 minutes, tops!

The 5 1/4 inch disk of yore soon thereafter shrunk to 3.5 inches and ceased to be floppy, but except for increases in storage capacity, has remained sacrosanct ever since. And they’re still in use, at least where I work. Last year, when we received a grant to buy new computers for the library, the staff screamed bloody murder at my offhand comment that the new computers would not have floppy drives. I had to spend extra money out of the grant to special order ones with floppies installed. Neither CD-roms, flash drives, nor password-protected folders on the server could take the place of that priceless satisfaction that came with popping the disk from the drive and walking away with it, knowing that your work was safe forever. (The kids, of course, couldn’t have cared less. They had no idea what those strange openings on the front of the computers were for, anyway.)

Sure, the flash drive in my pocket holds roughly 700 times the amount of information that a floppy can hold. Sure, when I insert the flash drive into my computer, I don’t have to worry that a piece of it is going to break off in the drive and require a half hour of prying with a paper clip to remove it. Sure, I don’t have to be deathly afraid that someone will write on it or bring it too close to a magnet, thus destroying its contents forever. Still, I can’t help but feel nostalgic at the imminent demise of the humble floppy. By so cavalierly discarding a trusty, faithful servant, have we not also discarded a tiny, magnetically charged part of our souls?

(Editor’s Note: the staff here at Heavy Metal Librarian apologizes profusely for the preceding slide into Alan Alda-esque mawkishness. You have our assurances that the offending staff member will be fired.)