Predicting the Future or Stuck in the Past - The AAUS Dive Comptuer Workshop

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Thalassamania

Diving Polymath
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The American Acadmeny of Underwater Science's Dive Comptuer Workshop was a watershed event. Almost overnight computers went from strange and poorly accepted instruments to, almost, everyday items.

There's been a lot of discussion concerning comptuers in the thread addressing the DAN Diving Fatality Report. Few divers know about the workshop or what went on, so, I'm suggesting that folks read Proceedings of Dive Computer Workshop (it's a free PDF) and then continue the discussion.

Most of the concerns that I’ve seen on the board here were hashed over in detail there ( I was there, I can help the discussion along with truth about the ‘booger eating moron’ comment and such).

Two big concerns at the workkshop were that divers would see computers as “table cartoons” and thus not learn any decompression theory and that divers would push things to the limit because computers gave them an actual limit that lack the inherent conservatism of time-not-spent-at-depth and tables. Perhaps we might start with those issues?
 
Great thread Thal. I agree wholeheartedly with the conclusions reached in the last paragraph. Unfortunately I've seen divers use the computer as not only a crutch but they treat it almost like the speed limit. It's OK to go over just a little, right? Computers are a terrific tool and I use them but they are just a tool.
 
Read the report and get back. We identified that as a primary issue back in '88. Why are we still talking about it and not doing something about it? What might we do?
 
Interesting proceedings. The SINGLE most interesting chart, to me, was the Suunto "Remembered Dive versus Computer Profile of Dive" chart.
 
interesting how safety stops didn't show up in computers until 10 years after this conference.
 
We were all talking about them at the time, esp. the deep stop stuff. One of the issues was that if you made a deep stop with a computer it was added on to your in gassing and if you ascended at standard rates (60/min) you'd bubble venous side and not have the calculated driving force pushing gas out, so the computer would not really know what was going on. I think that this was one of the reasons that slower ascents became part of the programs.
 
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