As pressure to rebrand institutions named after canceled historical figures, such as slaveholder presidents, continues to mount, Berkeley is positioning itself to be ready to respond to future cancellation campaigns in real-time.
Digital displays are being installed in place of stonework or plaques. School and city officials will be able to rename institutions instantaneously.
“For too long, names of schools and other public buildings have literally been etched in stone,” noted cancellation engineering industry leader Evan (“Bub”) By. “With digital naming installed, we can respond immediately to cancellation demands.” By’s company, Cancel IT, is licensing its cancellation systems to Berkeley.
BUSD School Board President K. Nee Jarker agrees with the need to engineer for immediacy in cancel culture. “Bub By’s innovative cancellation technology fills a critical gap in our educational system. Preparing students for the future depends on teaching them to cancel the past.”
City Finance Director Bud Jetholl praised the cancellation system as a potential new stream of revenue for the cash-strapped city. “We’ll be able to monetize the pool of candidate names. Virtue may be its own reward, but we can charge to signal it. Those pensions aren’t going to fund themselves!”
Berkeley itself is ripe for cancellation. George Berkeley, for whom the city is named, was a slaveholder, a practice he justified in the name of Christian conversion. Jetholl is eager to take full advantage of Berkeley’s inevitable cancellation. “It’s a no brainer. And just imagine how much we could charge, say, the Big Soda companies to cancel Berkeley. ‘Welcome to Mr. Pibb. This is Ohlone Territory.’ has a nice ring to it, no?”
Demand for cancellation engineering solutions has skyrocketed ever since the practice of issuing trigger warnings emerged. “We began by warning people about controversial or upsetting facts,” explained By. “It wasn’t much of a leap to go from teaching controversial material, to issuing trigger warnings about it, to just cancelling it.”
Asked what lies ahead in Berkeley’s need for cancellation solutions, By sees a bright future. “We have to get more dynamic. For example envision real-time renaming of streets. If you arrange to meet someone at the corner of Oxford and Bancroft, but those names are canceled after you leave the house. We can feed live cancellation streams to your mobile device while you are en route. We could rename the streets six times as you wait for the signal to change. The future of the past is cancellation.”
