Yes, before I start talking about floppy disks and other high technology and before anyone wants to elaborate, I know that the picture illustrating this news is not of the San Francisco subway, but to its iconic tram liftshow they represent a city that retains such a classical element, even though for the rest of the world it is one of the great cradles of the technological (r)evolution that we have been experiencing for several decades.

Yes, talking about San Francisco is evocative, as the ineffable Gervasio Losada, assistant manager of the Asturias Hotel, so well expressed to Antonio Albajar on his return to Spain and more specifically to his small homeland, the Gijón of his childhood and youth (Volver and Empezar, José Luis Garci, 1982 ). But it also makes many of us think of the South Bay Area, in San Jose, Santa Clara, Milpitas, Cupertino and Sunnyvale, among other key locations in the tech sector.

So, speaking of San Francisco, We can imagine that the latest technology is present in each of its aspects, which is one of the cradles of innovation, and therefore its basic infrastructure must be made up of things from which the future is built. However, the proverb has already told us, in the forge, a wooden knife. Which in that case, the infrastructure on which the management of San Francisco’s train system depends has elements that remain anchored in the last century.

Yes, as you saw in the title of this post, San Francisco’s train control system still uses floppy disks, a storage medium that has been replaced by optical media that has been replaced by electronic storage that aims to be at least partially replaced by cloud storage. And yes, it’s true, it could be worse, they could resort to tapes or even punched cards, but at least it would add a little extra exoticism.

The information comes from an ABC7 interview with Mariana Maguire of the SFMTA, the entity responsible for public transportation in San Francisco. In this interview, Maguire says that in its day this driving system was really innovative, but of course it was launched in 1998 and it’s surprising that it hasn’t been updated in this way until now. In addition, and as the interviewee herself states, they are really worried that any failure of this system could have a huge impact on the operator, since we are talking about a system that is responsible for the automatic control of trains. Yes, you can imagine the consequences.

Outside of unofficial and even how nostalgic it can be for some to remember floppy disks (which, by the way, it’s not entirely clear if it’s 3 1/2 or 5 1/4), is another reminder that innovation is not a milestone, but a journey, that no matter how innovative something was, time, before or later will end up obsolete (and no, in this case we are not talking about planned obsolescence) and we should cross our fingers that those responsible update this system as a precaution and not in response to an incident (or something worse) caused by this very lack of update.