In Star Trek: The Next Generation, their congentially blind engineer, Jordy LaForge, is able to see thanks to a visor worn across his eyes.
Now, thanks to an Israeli team, real-life technology has taken one more step to catching up with science fiction.
An amazing new device can use sound to hack into the visual cortex of blind people to let them 'see'.
Dr Amir Amedi, left, models his Sensory Substitution Device, which looks remarkably like the visor work by Star Trek character Jordy La Forge, right
The Sensory Substitution Device, brainchild of Dr Amir Amedi from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, uses an algorithm to translate visual data into sound.
With only a brief period of training, users can learn to interpret the 'soundscape' to show them the shape, location and position of people, objects, and even read written words.
Remarkably, the sounds created actually activate the otherwise dormant visual cortices of congenitally blind people, giving them the opportunity to see, after a fashion.
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