This Jubilee, let's look to the future as well as celebrating the past

The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations have kept us all gripped over the past four days and have proved a welcome respite from gloomy economic and political news. The pomp and pageantry were superb reminders of the emotional power of the monarchy, and the coverage by the BBC was exemplary.

Yet the very success of the Jubilee celebrations masks a hard truth: this is the last time they will happen.?

Since 1977 we have marked Queen Elizabeth’s silver, gold, diamond and now platinum jubilees, each one a reassuring reminder that in a changing world some things at least can be relied upon, that the monarch who was there throughout our childhoods is still there, like an unbroken thread connecting us back to those hazy, nostalgic memories.?Even the line-up of pop stars for the Jubilee concert – Diana Ross, Elton John, Queen, Rod Stewart – was as though chosen to support that myth; that some things just haven’t changed much since the 60s, 70s or 80s, that we are the same as we were back then. ?

But the cold hard fact that this will be the last jubilee of the Queen’s reign – and the last time that those vintage pop stars will perform at such an event – is something we need to steel ourselves for.

Because while one on level the bunting, the puddings and the pageantry were reassuring, the dawning realisation that this won’t happen again serves as a wake-up call that we are leaving the memories and the legacy of the twentieth century behind us. And the sooner we grasp this properly the better we will be able to face the huge changes and embrace the opportunities that the rest of twenty-first century will bring.

In many ways we in Britain are still living with the lingering memories of that era-defining event of the twentieth century, the Second World War. The Queen herself was active on the home front through it, and most of our parents or grandparents were brought up either during it, or in the aftermath of it. I myself was born just 30 years after the war ended, which is a strange thought – I still feel young!

My grandparents’ outlook was shaped hugely by the war itself and its consequences. They had nothing but the utmost respect for the Queen, who was crowned just a few years after the end of the war and who came to symbolise all that the UK went through during the subsequent decades of the twentieth century. Decades that were also defined by the music of Elton John et al. They weren’t always easy years in the 70s, 80s and 90s, but they were years that through the soft lens of nostalgia we tend to look back on fondly; they were our years, when we grew up and when pop music came of age too.

To watch Queen Elizabeth at her Platinum Jubilee, to watch those ageing rockers, gives us simultaneously both a sense of comfort and of uneasiness. For while the Queen’s physical presence at some of the jubilee events provides a happy reassurance that our connection with the last century is still intact, her obvious frailty and her absence from other events is an unnerving reminder that before long she will be gone and then it will be time to let go of the twentieth century.

Which will be a good thing if we let it go in the right way.

My sons were born in 2017 and will remember very little of the second Elizabethan age. It is a curious thought to me that none of the pop music that I know so well, that defined my childhood and teenage years, means anything to them. The Second World War will be something they study at school and which will seem lost to a former age – not one that their grandparents or parents fought in, endured, were made by. And that is no bad thing necessarily. It is of course just the inevitable march of time.?

On the one hand this is no different from previous eras passing into history; yet the second half of the twentieth century with the emergence of pop culture, mass media and consumerism somehow has a special hold over the collective modern psyche. Anyone now in a position of power or influence grew up in that era, went to school during it, grew up with Diana Ross, Duran Duran, Rod Stewart…and through it all the Queen was there just as she is now, a link back to the 40s and 50s when much of our national narrative was created, when our grandparents lived through the hardships that made us who we are now.

And so when the time comes that Queen Elizabeth passes on it will feel like a sudden severance from the past, a psychological moment that will be difficult to face for many. A moment of realisation that we must cut the ties of the twentieth century and look to the future, if we are brave enough.

I feel extremely fortunate that my job is all about looking to the future. It’s about thinking about the future of work as it relates to RSM, our people and our clients. It’s about considering how best to innovate, to tap into the great ideas of our people at all levels. What gives me huge optimism are two things: the enthusiasm and compassion of our young people and the possibilities of coupling that with technology as we make that break with the past.

The technologies that will define the rest of the twenty-first century – artificial intelligence and digitally enhanced realities – were born out of the computing breakthroughs in the middle of the twentieth century.?AI is on the verge of becoming an established feature of and complement to our working lives, supporting our decision-making and ability to make accurate predictions.?Digitally enhanced realities (metaverses, if you will) are around us already, even if we don’t recognise it yet, and will become more and more ingrained in our everyday experiences.

The possibilities for productive work, for creativity and for social benefit are vast. AI could help to solve food shortages through optimising agricultural management; it could vastly speed up the discovery and development of life-saving drugs; it could save us from some of the worst effects of climate change through pointing the way to emission-free energy sources. The metaverse could unleash computer-aided human ingenuity in completely unforeseen ways, helping us to collaborate across physical spaces to break down societal barriers (as an avatar, you can be whomever you want) and to innovate together on some of the world’s most intractable problems.?

Yet at the same time AI and the metaverse come with huge risks: the incorporation of established social bias within learning algorithms could perpetuate or worsen already entrenched social disadvantages for ethnic groups, women or the disabled; the digital divide could worsen further, with those with the education and finances to access digital technologies propelled further from those who have neither; an epidemic of mental health issues as more and more people feel disconnected from the world around them, or pressured to become something they aren’t through the malign influence of social media.

To grasp the opportunities while avoiding these pitfalls requires us to realise that these technologies are part of our future reality.?The comfort and security of the analog world of the mid-twentieth century is passing away. The next time we come together as a nation to celebrate a jubilee of some sort it will be without the Queen, without Elton John or Duran Duran. Our links to that era are straining and will soon be severed completely.

This Jubilee weekend will be the last of its kind. It’s a time for celebration and for nostalgia. But it must also be a moment when we steel ourselves to look forward to the second half of the twenty-first century, more than we look back over our shoulders to the last half of the twentieth. A future that will be owned by the children of today who won’t remember the Queen first hand, and who will be as comfortable in a digital space as in the ‘real world’.

If the early-career people at RSM are anything to go by there’s every reason to hope it to be a bright future for our country and for our planet, so long as we take this opportunity to look forward as much as we celebrate our past.