topo-, top-, -topia, -topy, -topism, -topic

An ideal place where everything is run with technological precision and convenience. Could this describe Bill Gate's home in which he had extraordinary technological devices incorporated to control "many" aspects of his residence?

• Security system (automated and personnel) is redundant.
• Hidden cameras everywhere including interior stone walls. Sensors in the floor can track a person to within six inches.
• System is monitored at the Microsoft campus.
• Gates' house is all polished wood and vaulted ceilings.
• Miles of fiber-optic cable are strung inside the walls and crawl spaces.
• Video screens capable of displaying computer images, standard television or high-definition TV are everywhere; but the technology is unobtrusive, even the electrical outlets and phone jacks are hidden away.
• Gates insisted on saving a 140-year-old maple adjacent to the driveway. The tree is monitored electronically 24 hours a day via computer. If it seems dry, it gets just the right amount of water automatically delivered.
• If one wishes, music will follow a person throughout the house; even at the bottom of the pool.
• Entry gate senses when his car approaches and opens fully by the time he arrives.
• There are fifty-two miles of communication cable in the building, largely fiber optic, running throughout the house, linking computer servers powered by the Windows NT operating system.
• In each room, touch-sensitive pads control lighting, music, and climate.
• Visitors will wear small electronic pins, which will let the computers know who and where they are.
• Lights and other settings will adjust automatically.
• Floors throughout the house (and the driveway) are heated.
• His master bathtub can be filled to the right temperature and depth by Gates as he drives home from work.
• "I wanted craftsmanship but nothing ostentatious," Gates said.
• "I wanted a house that would accommodate sophisticated, changing technology but in an unobtrusive way that made it clear that technology was the servant, not the master."

This has to be considered one of the best examples of a technotopia!

Pain fixed in one spot on a person's body; Topalgia is a symptom occurring in neuroses whereby localized pain, without an evident organic basis, is experienced.

The ruler or prince of a small district, city, or petty state; a petty “king”.

1. Small state consisting of a few towns.
2. The small district or territory under the rule of a toparch.

The surgical excision of selected portions of the frontal cortex of the brain for the relief of mental disorders; also identified as, corticectomy.

The ability to localize a tactile sensation: Hanna was asked to close her eyes and to use her proficiency or capability in topesthesia to identify where the stimulators were touching her.

1. Of or characterized by the clipping or trimming of live shrubs or trees into decorative shapes, as of animals.
2. A reference to plants that are clipped or trimmed into fantastic shapes.
3. The art of clipping bushes and shrubs into ornamental shapes.

The topiary garden at Levens Hall, Cumbria, UK, features designs that are more than 300 years old and were initially planted and trained during the 1690s. The topiary shapes in the garden include a judge's wig, umbrellas, all kinds of animals, and other shapes.

When Col. Grahme, who had held the office of Privy Purse to King James II, came back to Levens in 1688 upon the abdication of the King, he brought with him the gardener Monsieur Guillaume Beaumont. He was trained under Le Nôtre at Versailles and he laid out the gardens at Hampton Court. He started work in 1694 creating the design for the garden which can be seen now.

Inability to localize tactile sensations: Despite working with several psychologists and physiotherapists, Stanford’s topoanesthesia persisted and he was unable to identify where Dr. Lawson was applying the stimulators that were touching him.

Directed movement or orientation of a motile organism towards the source of a chemical stimulus.

A geocline extending over an unusually long distance.

The directed movement or orientation of a motile organism towards the source of an electric stimulus.