DiGiTAl

TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING EVERYTHING. A NEW GENERATION OF INNOVATORS ENJOYS THE GRAVITY OF THE SITUATION
DiGiTAl DoZEN
THE
E
VERY YEAR, WE AT TIME DIGITAL CHOOSE THE
12 MEN AND
women who are doing the most to shape the future of technology. And every year, it gets a little harder. When this
magazine was first launched, most technology actually was
“digital.” Now it’s organic, prosthetic, aesthetic, pharmaceutical, suborbital and goodness knows what else. In this month’s installment, we
profile a fashion designer, a space-travel impresario and a high-tech
philanthropist. And in 2027, who knows? It’s still up in the air.
PHOTO-ILLUSTRATIONS BY NICK KOUDIS FOR TIME DIGITAL
The Divine Nine Cotillion
boldly went where no party
had gone before: outer space
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P EA RL R O C O C O
FOUNDER, ROCOCO DIGITAL ENTERPRISES
F
OR DECADES, THERE’S BEEN TALK OF PRIVATIZING THE
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space effort—but it took one of America’s best-known
socialites to make it happen.
Of course, Pearl Rococo is much more than a party maven.
An Internet mogul, content producer and renowned philanthropist, she first caught the public eye as a prime mover in the
Urban Renaissance that revitalized America’s inner cities in the
first decade of this century. What would she do for an encore?
“Everybody kind of snickered when Pearl’s 40 Acres Initiative
bought that rusty real estate in Canaveral, Fla.,” recalls society
doyenne Courtney Pulitzer. “But the project really took off.”
Rebuilding the decrepit Kennedy Space Center was relatively
easy; new magnetic launch tracks instantly made civilian space
travel a smooth, nonpolluting ride. But the trick was turning an
old, disused orbiting space station into America’s ultimate entertainment destination. And that’s where Rococo’s matchless talents
as a hostess came into play.
Each year, the Divine Nine Cotillion hosts ranking members
of all nine African-American fraternities and sororities. For the
last decade, this event—which also determines America’s social
trends for the year—has been held at New York’s Colonel Guion
Bluford Pavilion. But last year, Rococo had another idea: to turn
the Divine Nine into history’s first outer-space party.
It wasn’t easy. Her proposal brought stiff protests from the
Earl Graves Foundation, which is affiliated with the Omega Psi Phi
Fraternity and owns Bluford Pavilion. “Ms. Rococo’s initiative is
an affront to Colonel Bluford’s memory, to a cherished tradition,
and, in particular, to Omega Psi Phi,” declared Earl Graves III,
Omega Psi Phi’s representative to the Cotillion Planning Committee. Rococo smoothed these ruffled feathers by arranging
generous donations to the Graves
Foundation from the United Sisters of Zeta Phi
Beta, Alpha Kappa Alpha and Sigma Gamma Rho. The party
was on, and since that unforgettable night vacationers and conventioneers have been clamoring for tickets into space.
As a result of the cotillion’s success, Rococo persuaded
the prestigious Winfrey-Cosby Institute to establish Satellite
University, an internationally accredited post-graduate center for
higher learning, which attracts the cream of the Divine Nine
pledges, as well as other elite students from around the world.
“Satellite University has become an international portal, providing people of all nations with access to data, education and other
resources,” says Zeca Moreno, chief coordinator of the WinfreyCosby Institute. “In a nation that often seems lethargic, spoiled
and obsessed with trivia, Pearl Rococo has become a symbol of
hope, of striving ambition—and the standard-bearer of a hightech revolution for all.”
A YU MI MI YA MO TO
CEO, PRINCESS PEACH INTERNATIONAL
T
HIS FALL, WHEN NINTENDO HEIRESS AYUMI MIYAMOTO
seized the Milan runways and unveiled Princess Peach
International’s Web Wear line, everyone present knew
they were seeing the future of the frock.
“Ever since my parents founded Princess Peach,” the dazzling
fashion mogul announced to a rapt audience, “our corporate goal
has been to unite high style and high functionality, not just for the
fashion elite but for the whole world. Our new design partner in
New York, Wu Wear, finally brings us to the heights of a truly global
cybergreen aesthetic. Combining our already extensive grassroots
retail and village networks, and with confirmed support from the
marketing wing of United Popstarz, Princess Peach and Wu Wear
Micro-Textiles will globally dominate street trends throughout
the 2026 season.”
A bold prediction, but Ayumi and Princess Peach have the
chops—and the chips—to back it up.
Princess Peach was the first to make so-called downloadable
clothing not only practical, but chic. A Princess Peach garment
comes in the form of a limp bundle of nondescript cloth. It becomes wearable only when the buyer downloads a design to a CPU
woven into the material—whereupon it instantly configures itself.
From Hong Kong to Samarkand, Princess Peach’s clientele
can change the color, shape, texture and design of any
Web Wear garment literally at the touch of a button.
Custom variations are also available via satellite
and lapel omnicom.
Princess Peach has more going for it than high
style and great gear: Miyamoto has repeatedly
crushed the competition with sheer practicality. The
Web Wear sheath is composed of hybridized, neoorganic fibers, which auto-sterilize in sunlight, swiftly
vaporizing bacteria and debris. Not only do these garments make polluting detergents a thing of the past,
but they are especially popular in the many parts of
the planet where water is in short supply. “Ayumi was
the first businesswoman to bring true haute couture
to the planet’s majority populations,” says Giacomo
Petrinelli, chief parfumier of EuroBoutique. “All we’ve
done is follow her footsteps into the huge emerging mar-
HAIR: YUSEFF; MAKEUP: DON ROKICKI; STYLIST: JOE DELATE; STYLIST ASSISTANT: HADLEY HAUT; WARDROBE:
VERSACE, VIVIANE TAM, CARMEN MARK VALVO, KALINKA, ADRIEN LANDAU, PAN-ZAI, NEW YORK INDUSTRY,
NORMA KAMALI, TUFI DUEK; JEWELRY: NOIR
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CAI T L IN G AT E S
DIRECTOR, BILL & MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION
A
SK CAITLIN GATES ABOUT THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE SHE
faced in 2025. She’ll tell you it wasn’t her day job as chief
of Microsofts 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0, nor her recent biotech spinoff MicroBioSoft. It wasn’t her role as the guiding force behind
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which began 2022 as the
world’s wealthiest philanthropic institution and finished as the
world’s wealthiest institution, period. It wasn’t even her triumphant
recapturing of the World Chess Federation championship from
archnemesis Flaming Indigo TX4040.
“My single greatest challenge,” confesses the 24-year-old megamogul as she relaxes in her traditional, highly wired Seattle family
home, “was beating my dad at Age of Empires. He just loves those
classic computer games.”
Whatever she says, Gates changed the world this year when she
announced that the Gates Foundation would launch the longawaited third phase in its Global Charitable Initiative. “The world
is finally ready for laptops,” said Gates at a steering committee
meeting in December. “Our broad-based sub-Saharan irrigation pro-
(The Digital Dozen continues in our next issue)
(TOP) COAT BY BERLIN 147; (BOTTOM) DRESS BY MATT NYE, WRAP BY MARY JAEGER; ALL ACCESSORIES BY JILL PLANTER
kets of Africa, China and Indonesia. And besides, she is just so chic! ”
It’s no wonder that Miyamoto’s innovative approach dominates
couture across the developing world. And here in America, wearing
a single all-purpose work and party suit allows millions to use a little extra capital for their favorite sport: stock speculation. Many put
their nest eggs into Princess Peach—and who can blame them?
THE DiGiTAl DoZEN
gram, combined with Gates-sponsored agriculture genetic engineering research, has effectively stemmed the tide of world
hunger. AIDS, malaria, cholera, ebola, tuberculosis—our medical
branch has eradicated every one of these killers. We can now
return to our original agenda, the one we began some 30 years
ago: universal access to computers and to the Net.”
The fourth and youngest child of Microsoft’s legendary
founder, Caitlin Gates grew up in the brave new world of hightech mega-philanthropy. The digital economy of the 1990s
created personal fortunes of unprecedented magnitude—
“gazillionaire” became an official entry in the Oxford English Dictionary in 2002. As a result, organizations like the Gates Foundation and the eBay Institute for Global Economic Reform used
their financial clout to attack disease, hunger and illiteracy on a
scale never previously imagined. Caitlin Gates’ precocity—she
gained early notoriety by proving Goldbach’s Conjecture
at age 9—convinced her father to hand her the reins of the
foundation and the Baby Bills in 2015, when he retired to
pursue his first love, water skiing.
What does the year ahead hold for Gates and her many
trillions? She’s already invested heavily in efforts to mine the
asteroid belt for silicon. Once those shipments reach Earth, she’s
hoping to build and give away enough computers to raise the
planet’s computers-to-humans ratio as high as 20 to 1. Of course,
no one will be surprised to learn that those billions of computers will run—what else?—Microsoft software.
And then? “More of Age of Empires,” she says, with complete
seriousness. “Dad wants a rematch.”
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