Hello Ric here, this video today will be on the Visor tech from Star Trek, looking at…
exploring just how it’s depicted to work in the shows as well as some real life developments
in this vein of technology. I’d like to quickly point out that that blindness or damaged
vision is not as simple as just not being able to see and it has a myriad of causes
and therefore a variety of specialised treatments, not just the ones I’m looking at here today.
The term is an acronym for Visual Instrument and Sensory Organ Replacement and was created
to allow those who were born blind, like LaForge to see. It doesn’t quite line up to 1 to
1 human sight but does have several advantages and disadvantages over natural human vision.
Geordi’s Visor for the longest time was a seldom seen piece of technology in The Next
Generation with even fellow Starfleet officers expressing curiosity at the device. In short,
the Visor acted as Geordie’s artificial eyes in place of his own. It is in two parts,
the external VISOR itself and the connections that are wired directly into the wearer’s
brain. The visor can detect well into the unperceivable
ends of the EM spectrum, from 1 hertz to 100,000 terahertz, and interpret the received data
as visual colours. This means the wearer can “see” radio waves and other electromagnetic
radiations. It can also perceive other affects such as subspace phenomena in a limited fashion.
These signals are then transmitted via subspace field pulse which compresses the information
to the nodes at the ends of the device where it rests on the sides of the head. These then
transmit via contact to the implants that are present on the wearer’s temples where
they are then interpreted by the mind with the assistance of some neural wiring.
The wearer’s vision is not quite as a normal eye would see it, colours and shapes can be
more difficult to make out for the non-accustomed eye, but to a lifetime wearer, it makes complete
sense. A practiced wearer can even use it to identify the infrared heat being given
off a person and view the amount of sweat being excreted to gauge if someone is lying.
Geordie also once joked he could use it to see through playing cards during a game of
poker, although this seems unlikely. The Visor’s vision can be accessed remotely
and LaForge even tinkered with the notion of using it during away missions as a camera
for the crew of the Enterprise to view through. However, in more nefarious ways, the subspace
transmissions from the Visor can be altered to transmit its viewpoint to another source.
Such a vulnerability required access to the Visor itself but once established was a remote
connection. At one point, Romulan agents were able to use the direct interface that the
internal elements of a Visor provided to brainwash LaForge and use E-band transmissions to trigger
implanted conditioning within him. It’s a little known fact that continual
use of a visor is actually painful. The direct connection to the wearer’s nervous system
causes frequent headaches and in the beginning before acclimatisation it downright hurts.
The wearer however gradually becomes used to its effects with medication and natural
tolerance and Geordie LaForge eventually chose to forgo as medication as possible as it could
interfere with the quality of the images he saw. Not every individual takes to a Visor
as well as LaForge for some it simply would not work and others it was too painful.
The earliest Visors seen in canon were from 2257 and these were much bulkier models with
more extensive augmentation applied to the head, not just the small areas on the temples
and by 2373, the visor had be superseded by less obtrusive and more natural looking eye
implants. There are non-canonical tales suggest that the accelerated development of such implants
was to address the notable security issues associated with the Visor.
There are other technologies that can address issues of blindness in Star Trek, for example,
cloning a new eye and implanting that is an option, but not one chosen by LaForge. Perhaps
this is because his blindness was caused by a genetic defect and therefore his DNA was
unusable in creating new eyes through cloning. This paired with the Federation’s stance
on augmentation and genetic tampering may have ruled out correcting his genome.
Another alternative was the sensory webbing garment to be worn over the whole body which
emitted unperceivable (at least to human ears) sonic frequencies to effectively Sonar and
echo-located the surroundings and converted the received information into a tactile sense.
For those who think Star Trek doesn’t influence the direction of real technology, allow me
to introduce JORDy. The Joint Optical Reflective Display. Developed in the late 90s, this device
was pretty much a magnifying glass made with cameras and provided augmentation for those
whose vision was severely impaired. Development continued on this device improving stabilisation
and functions such as contrast. Although this was not a “cure for blindness”, it’s
undeniably striving towards that field. In most cases, optical implants are most successful
when there is an optical nerve to attach to, which makes the Visor even more impressive
as Geordie had none. More recently there are projects like Second Sight’s Argus II aim
to address issues such as Retinitis Pigmentosa, which is a genetic issue resulting the loss
of the rod and cone cells that detect light across the back of the eye. The Argus is far
from perfect, but again development is ongoing and like a Trek Visor consists of both implanted
and external components. Addressing this same issue is the Retinal
Implant AG Alpha IMS. Unlike the Argus, and similar IRIS II Systems, the Alpha IMS was
a sub-retinal implant chip, completely internal to the eye.
The reason for the rarity of a Visor in Star Trek may be explained by the real world development
of such devises. It’s far easier to develop a device to aid in the recovery of damaged
or failing vision than design a cure for blindness in a patient who has never had sight or an
optical nerve since birth, such as Geordie LaForge. Medical studies are making great
strides in this technology and following the fields of cybernetics is definitely an interesting
and often inspiring read, but apparently even in Trek it’s still an evolving technology.
Add this to the discomfort of the device and we can perhaps understand why many people
opted for other less obtrusive alternatives to the Visor.
So thank you for staying for this video on how the Visor of Star Trek works and I hope
I shed some light on some real world devices that aim to tackle these complicated ailments.
I’ve been Ric and until the next video, goodbye!