Many people see technological progress as a linear process of continuous improvement. The older I get, the more I see technological development as a process of trade-offs, one step forwards and two steps backwards. One priority matters more than another at one time, then those priorities are reversed; for example, plastic fins were considered inferior to natural rubber ones before the 1970s, then diving equipment companies, having thrown in their lot with the oil companies, claimed that plastics were now the future. We're left confused, not knowing what or who to believe.
Technology shouldn't be left to the technologists and the people who provide us with diving equipment shouldn't forget that good design is just as important as good technology. Diving gear is the product of art as well as science. There's no reason in the world why divers, or snorkellers, should all wear the same kinds of fins, masks or any other item of gear. We don't all wear the same street clothes, we adjust what we wear to our own circumstances, our age, our financial situation, so why should, say, older divers wear the same wet or drysuits as those from a younger generation? What we need is choice, the ability to select from modern and earlier technologies what best matches ourselves as individuals. There should be a wide range of diving technologies available for everybody. Just because something's new doesn't mean it's necessarily better for everybody. I will defend to the death anybody's right to wear a drysuit with multicoloured panels reminiscent of a harlequin or a clown, but I will only wear such an outfit over my own dead body. Each to his or her own.
More than anything else, I'd like to see greater freedom to choose what I want to snorkel or dive with, and I am totally opposed to any pressure from peers or experts to tell me what is best for me. I'd also like the freedom to purchase what I want when I see it on the Web anywhere in the world. There are so many interesting diving gear prototypes illustrated on the Web but I can't buy them singly, only in units of several hundred, and emails to the companies remain unanswered. The major international companies simply don't provide a full enough range of technology to satisfy every diver or snorkeller, because they're in business to make money first and discerning customers, particularly those who prefer 1960s designs made from natural materials to new millennium products made from synthetics, probably don't push company profits upwards much.
I'd also like to see more, unbiassed information about diving equipment. It's ludicrous nowadays that the only information we often have about, say fins, is the range of foot lengths which the fin's foot pocket is likely to accommodate. What about foot width, let alone arch height? There's a German Standard for marking fins with foot length and width, but very few companies use it. Then, keeping to fins, what about blade flexibility? There's a measurement of material softness and hardness, the shore, but where can I find a retailer who puts this into the description? Instead we have many SB messages from people asking which fins are narrow or broad fitting and which have stiff or flexible blades. Why don't the companies give us this information themselves? Maybe it's covered by commercial confidentiality, or maybe they think customers aren't interested...
