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Geordi La Forge's visor can be used to see different electromagnetic fields. This lets him see people as glowing fields, as well as other fields. How can he see monitors and other interfaces? A screen would have to have variance in its field in order to differentiate the separate icons so that his visor could pick it up but they don't do this (or at least real screens don't). Is there any in-universe explanation?

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Geordi's visor detects electromagnetic emissions - visible light is a part of the electromagnetic spectrum. It's just that the visor picks up a wider range of frequencies than natural human eyes can.

He'll still be able to distinguish icons, text and graphics on a screen that is active, just like we can.

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    Another way to put it is that what he sees is a superset of what normal human eyes see, so he can see whatever we see -- plus a lot more.
    – Tango
    Commented Apr 23, 2012 at 6:03
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    I thought that this particular part of the spectrum was unavailable to him (since this has formed a few plot-lines before), but you raise a valid point.
    – Teknophilia
    Commented Apr 23, 2012 at 13:00
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    I don't remember anything about the visible spectrum being unavailable (and you'd think this would be a pretty bad prosthetic if it was) - just that he's never seen anything without the rest of the spectrum, meaning he's never seen things as a 'normal' human would have.
    – HorusKol
    Commented Apr 24, 2012 at 1:11
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    If I were Geordi I would have modified the screens of the Enterprise to interface directly with my visor, so that I could get more information from them.
    – DJClayworth
    Commented Apr 24, 2012 at 14:39

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