Geordi's VISOR

[Trekker4747]

Geordi explains in "Masterpiece Society", among other episodes, that his VISOR scans the EM spectrum from 1hz to 100,000THz and puts that info directly into his brain which processes the information and allows him to see.

What he sees is a jumble of colors and nonsense that he's just worked out to being able to make useful. So, here's a question.

Why didn't the makers of the VISOR simply just have it only scan the visible light spectrum? Why the entire EM field?

 

[Apogeal Alpha01]

Much richer possibilities around character development and a nifty plot device if they have enlarged the scope of his abilities, rather than simply replaced eyes - which should have been easily done in the 24th century, btw.

 

[Timo]

Why not?

I mean, even visual light would probably still be but a "jumble of colors" to a guy whose visual nerves have been born defective (as inferred from Pulaski's words in "Loud as a Whisper"). So if he's going to have to adapt to the artificial feed anyway, why not give him more feed than the average human? If you lose your legs, the doctor might choose to give you an extra five centimeters of height on the prosthetics just because.

In "Heart of Glory", LaForge explains he has no problem with the filtering, and in "Loud as a Whisper" he says he quite enjoys having the VISOR. In "Farpoint", it was said the device causes some pain due to the way he uses his sensing processes "differently", but that would probably be true even if the feed was purely visual.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Apogeal Alpha01]

Yes, but in Insurrection, or perhaps when Q offers to restore his sight, he's practically weeping about his desire to see 'normally.' He wanted to see Tasha Yar with his own eyes. He was resolved to the situation.

 

[Timo]

Granted that - but it'd probably still count as a perversion, a brief dalliance with something he wouldn't want to be stuck with for his whole remaining life.

I mean, sure, he had probably been holding a brave facade until then. But in "Loud as a Whisper", he indicated that he truly preferred that facade, and turned down the opportunity to get the normal sight restored. He also turned down Q's promises, after having had some time to think about it - so the prognosis for ST:INS wouldn't be too good, either. He'd probably still feel like maintaining the facade.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Apogeal Alpha01]

In First Contact, he did get the upgrades. Not wanting to be on the receiving end of Q's largess, was an act of solidarity and bravery on his part. He wanted the eyes.

However, having adapted to the increased abilities over one's entire life, you would miss them when there were gone.

 

[Timo]

Actually, in "Loud as a Whisper", Pulaski establishes that it would be trivial to replace the VISOR with internally placed artificial eyes that feature all the same functionalities as the external device. And it is quite possible that the eyes installed for ST:FC are exactly that: an internally mounted VISOR, with plenty of capabilities beyond optical zoom. Certainly they don't allow LaForge to see sunsets the way "normal people" would, because this was such a big thing for him in ST:INS.

The more demanding operation would have been to restore functionality to LaForge's optical nerves, after which it would have become trivial to plug in real eyes. Apparently, this happened in ST:INS, although we don't know whether the fountain of youth restored only the nerves (which would then start working in concert with the artifical eyes, which would go to "visual mode" and start looking like real irises) or both the nerves and the eyes (after which the artificial implants, which probably weren't deeper than contact lenses, could have been popped out to reveal the healed natural orbs). And apparently, those effects were reversed once LaForge left the planet.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Apogeal Alpha01]

But, inability to repair nerve endings has always seemed like a simple plot point to me. No more difficult than removing Picard's Borg implants, or re-polarizing neurons or synapses in this or that part of a brain, stem. I see your point.

Do you recall if when Geordi zoomed in, in First Contact, the vision was in normal light wavelengths. I think I remember that it was. I could be mistaken.

 

[Timo]

The view in ST:FC was false color, with Cochrane glowing against the background as if in an infrared view. Then again, in "Mind's Eye" we saw that the VISOR can produce relatively normal visual imagery, too. And Soran's bug probably tapped VISOR imagery in ST:GEN as well, rather than being a separate camera.

I'd argue that both the VISOR and the eye implants are capable of producing all sorts of sensor feed, narrow and broad spectra alike, and LaForge prefers to use the total feed even though it is technologically possible to filter just the visual parts.

Hence, in "Heart of Glory", it is simply an alien concept for LaForge to try and tune his VISOR feed to something that Picard might better understand - he could give just the visual, but he doesn't understand why Picard would want to see that, and probably doesn't have a good idea of what to take and what to leave anyway.

Technically, the VISOR and the artificial eyes would give LaForge the perfect visual version of the sunset, or of Tasha Yar. But LaForge's brain doesn't know how to define "visual", or he wouldn't trust his brain to define it correctly anyway. He will only believe he is getting the "real", "natural" view when this is imposed on him by an outside expert such as Q or by the fountain of youth.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Trekker4747]

I had always assumed that the bug in GEN *was* some sort of camera since the view was normal. I guess it is possible, though, that it tapped into its imagery and Lursa and Be'tor/Soren just adjusted the singal to only display visible light -thus the normal image.

The differences between his view in "Heart of Glory" and "Mind's Eye" I've always chalked up to being more of a production thing than a suggestion on him being able to "tune" the VISOR.

We know this for sure:

LaForge's VISOR scans the entire EM field. From long waves all the way up to gamma-rays and dumps this information into his visual cortex which processes it and allows hom to see. It would seem his "blindness" comes from not having anything more in his occular cavitiy than the conjuctiva and not from a problem with the visual center of his brain. LaForge cannot see "as we do" and this often distresses him.

Regardless of anything we've been shown, we know this to be the case. -All cases of us seeing "though his eyes" are a case of production inconsistancy. Heart of Glory, Mind's Eye and FC.

Geordi often has shown he prefers to see like this as it gives him abilities that others do not and makes him a great engineer.

But, if the VISOR and it's implanted components can scan the entire EM field it should make sense that it's components could've been tuned to only scan the visible light spectum. When the VISOR was first installed into him as a child why was it not made this way then? (Then the issue of "it being possible, Geordi doesn't want it" moot.)

 

[Timo]

Why would the issue be moot? The doctors might have argued that the child would want enhanced vision as compensation for his birth defects.

It would seem his "blindness" comes from not having anything more in his occular cavitiy than the conjuctiva and not from a problem with the visual center of his brain.

But the orbs themselves can be replaced by 24th century medicine as a matter of triviality, or so Pulaski says in "Loud as a Whisper"; it would probably be just as easy as giving Nog a new leg. It's the optical nerves that are fried and cannot be replaced so simply, requiring the weird bypass through the temples.

The brain probably is intact, yes, but it's now conditioned to looking at VISOR feed rather than simple optical feed. I wonder if this isn't a relatively recent development, though: LaForge might have insisted on the increased capabilities of the VISOR after having grown up with a simpler version of the device.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

But, inability to repair nerve endings has always seemed like a simple plot point to me. No more difficult than removing Picard's Borg implants, or re-polarizing neurons or synapses in this or that part of a brain, stem. I see your point.

I'm not sure just how much work they can and can't do on nerves, actually. I remember a reference from some episode that if you stun somebody enough times, that it can do irreversible damage. I've also noticed that the majority of the irreversible diseases we've seen--Irumodic, Bendii, and Yarim Fel all come to mind--have some sort of involvement of the nervous system, with two of them being flat-out neurological disorders and the third (in my totally uneducated guesstimation) possibly being an autoimmune disorder that includes the nervous system in its attacks. And one of the few areas where we've seen incurable mental patients has been when genetic resequencing involving nerve growth has gone wrong.

While sometimes 24th-century doctors seem to be able to work miracles involving the nervous system...it would seem from my observations that they do still run into hard limits when it comes to their ability to meddle with the brain and nervous system.

 

[Timo]

...For example, Dr. Bashir is unable to remove macroscopic objects from Garak's midbrain. And apparently, Federation medicine is powerless to remove Borg communications hardware from Picard's brain.

So even if Bashir can do brain prosthetics using positronic devices, he can't categorically replace or repair everything in our skulls. Optical nerves are a bit odd for a "hard limit" since they are basically simple cabling that could be made out of copper if need be. But the interface between the retina and the optical nerve is a relatively complex "subprocessor", for which a replacement (be it electronic, duotronic, positronic or optronic or whatever) might have been impossible to design in the mid-24th century and still difficult to design in the late 24th.

...Although I think we could actually do such replacements in the real life in 50 years or less. And replacement cerebellums not long after that. It's just simple computing, and actually nowhere as tight-packed and complex as our current computer chips.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Trekker4747]

I quote Dr. Crusher in that in the 24th Century humans have mapped the entire brain.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I quote Dr. Crusher in that in the 24th Century humans have mapped the entire brain.

But does that mean they can manipulate all parts of the brain, or know ALL of its mysteries? That I am not so sure about.

 

[Apogeal Alpha01]

...For example, Dr. Bashir is unable to remove macroscopic objects from Garak's midbrain. And apparently, Federation medicine is powerless to remove Borg communications hardware from Picard's brain.

So even if Bashir can do brain prosthetics using positronic devices, he can't categorically replace or repair everything in our skulls. Optical nerves are a bit odd for a "hard limit" since they are basically simple cabling that could be made out of copper if need be. But the interface between the retina and the optical nerve is a relatively complex "subprocessor", for which a replacement (be it electronic, duotronic, positronic or optronic or whatever) might have been impossible to design in the mid-24th century and still difficult to design in the late 24th.

...Although I think we could actually do such replacements in the real life in 50 years or less. And replacement cerebellums not long after that. It's just simple computing, and actually nowhere as tight-packed and complex as our current computer chips.

Timo Saloniemi

There you go! Foreseeing what we will do is only limited by imagination and extrapolation of what we can do now, and given what is already envisioned as doable in the 24th century, it's slightly implausible to think that the road block is simple 'wiring' - of a sub processor between an eye and the brain.

Of course, I do understand the need for drama, and there is no drama is every thing is possible. Anyway, thanks. You were able to see this from a perspective that I was not.

I just wanted to add: another reason that it seems implausible is that even today, we can take the working organs from healthy humans and easily replace damaged parts in an otherwise healty person. So, there we go back to the 'wiring,' with no need, especially in the 24th century, to replicate or duplicate technologically the function of an organ.

 

[Unicron]

IIRC, Pulaski doesn't say that artificial eyes would be identical to what the VISOR offers; such eyes would be 20% less efficient, and the other option was extensive repairs to the tissue itself with replicated eyes. This would give Geordi normal vision, but not the same range the VISOR is capable of.

 

[tharpdevenport]

I would imagine the sisters did put a seperate, hidden camera in his VISOR. If Geordi can see in normal view, then why deny himself sunsets and what Tasha looked like? Seems rather silly if you ask me, espcially if you cry when seeign a sunset.

 

[Timo]

It wouldn't need to be a problem with the visual input: the various devices could easily supply those fragments of the vista that mere mortals can see, in addition to supplying all the rest. It would be a problem of LaForge's brain deciding what to see - what to take, and what to leave.

LaForge has no desire to move over to a mode of vision that only gives him visual sunsets and visual Tashas. He merely has the desire to experience these things once or twice in his life - just like a guy might want to try out some handcuff games once, but isn't exactly desiring the life of a chained slave.

To undergo extensive surgery for the brief experiments wouldn't justify the risks and downsides, as LaForge says both to Crusher in "Farpoint" and Pulaski in "Loud as a Whisper". On the other hand, to filter out everything but the visual input would be mainly a mental exercise - but not a trivially easy one. And getting the sunset all handed to you readymade must be much more gratifying than striving to do the chore of filtering the correct view oneself. It would be much like the difference between listening to a well-played violin concert, and learning to play the violin so that one could produce the concert oneself. The latter would be more a chore than an enjoyable experience, at least if one wasn't out to make a career in violin playing.

Timo Saloniemi