“By looking at the current presence of past technology we can assess our present-day situation and speculate on the future developments of our media landscape….”Ī computer repair shop in North Carolina exhibits a tower of 50 disks as a curio from the past - complete with a plaque explaining what they are. In fact, the book’s description at Amazon promises it challenges the very notion of obsolescence itself - while delivering an important message. “it is nice to know that we’re getting people stuff they really need.” People see their late grandmother or their baby pictures again and that’s very important to them… “You would not believe some of the letters we get back. ” And that work has been very gratifying, Persky told the authors of the recent book. On a 2015 podcast, Persky pointed out that “There still are millions of floppy disks out there with first drafts of novels and dissertations and address books and all kinds of things that people want to get that data off. “The technology is interesting,” Persky told me Thursday, “and I’ve enjoyed solving the unlimited number of problems that people present…” And Persky also provides the service of retrieving files stored on floppy disks for people who no longer have a way to access them. He’s keeping the business running with the help of three employees. “It’s shocking to me,” Persky says in the book. I only started selling blank copies organically over time.” Yet while 90% of his business used to be duplicating CDs and DVDs, now 90% of his business is selling blank floppy disks. “Duplicating disks in the 1980s and early 1990s was as good as printing money. “Not in a million years did I think I would ever sell blank floppy disks,” he tells the book’s authors. Persky’s ongoing work has finally gained him a kind of cult status, judging by his interview in the upcoming book “ Floppy Disk Fever: The Curious Afterlives of a Flexible Medium.” In the interview, Persky remembers how his wife had first purchased the domain more than 30 years ago (“around 1990”) - but as recently as 2002, Persky’s only business was duplicating floppy disks. “I started out as a tax lawyer, then a software developer, then a duplication company, and now selling floppy disks,” Persky tells me in an email interview Thursday. ![]() In a nondescript industrial park in Lake Forest, California, Reuters visited Persky’s one-of-a-kind warehouse, a floppy disk heaven with multitudes of different-colored disks - green, orange, blue, yellow or black disks - “sent from around the world” to be stacked neatly on his warehouse shelves.ĬNN called it “where all your floppy disks went.” His very existence offers an odd and inspiring chance to reflect on our current stack of technologies today, a larger ecosystem where one medium invariably gives way to another, while bringing unanticipated challenges - and some inconvenient questions.īut most surprisingly, it’s also an ecosystem where the seemingly archaic floppy-disk format still lives on in the world - thanks to the persistent efforts of just one dedicated entrepreneur, the self-described “last man standing in the floppy disk business.” Floppy Disk Heaven This month, 73-year-old Tom Persky found himself fielding interview requests about floppy disks from Reuters, NPR, and the authors of a new book - not to mention a 2017 appearance on CNN. ![]() Floppy disks were the primary storage mechanism for how data was backed up and shared from the world’s very first home computers starting more than 40 years ago. “Floppy disks” are two words triggering long-ago memories for those who remember the way things were.
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