It is becoming more and more frequent that I find myself with divers who are extremely computer dependent. Since computers are becoming a dime a dozen, I am not sure if this is a bad thing. I asked one of the divers I was with if she was able to plan and conduct dives without a computer and she told me that she has over 200 dives but was never trained on tables.
How many of you guys do dives without computers? For those senior divers who have been diving since before the computer revolution, do you feel that the new generation has been idiotized by computers, or no.
I jumped in this thread late and I haven't read any other responses yet so I apologize if I'm repeating.
First of all, asking if a computer can even THEORETICALLY turn someone into a bad diver is like asking if putting a hat on your head can make you an evil human being.
The computer, like the hat, is a tool with a function. That's it. That's all it is, and that's all it does. The computer calculates NDL's on the fly, and the hat keeps rain off your head. Attributing any more significance or importance to the computer than that, is attributing too much influence to the computer and too little to the diver.
That said, one must be *trained* to use the computer wisely, just as we (I am also one of the "pre-computer" generation) were also *trained* to use tables wisely.
Almost all of the best practices that applied to using tables applies to using computers. There are a few new ones that are unique to using computers because the N2 loading can normally become higher than it would have been on a similar dive with tables. You need look no further than the fact that computers allow for longer bottom times to confirm this, even if you don't know much about deco models.
So what happens is that it comes down to a matter of training. Poorly trained divers will dive poorly. People who are not adequately trained to use a computer, or tables or any other technique (like ratio deco) to calculate NDLs will not use those tools adequately. It's really that simple.
To put it another way, think about learning to drive a car. If someone just gives you the keys and doesn't tell you what any of the controls do or how to make it go or stop, then you're probably going to have trouble handling it. Likewise with a dive computer. If you just buy one at the LDS and don't understand the functions or the best practices, then you can hurt yourself even if the computer is "happy" with your dive. None of that has anything to do with the computer. it's purely a training issue.
As for your second question, I still regularly make dives on tables during training because I only have 2 computers to give to students. Normally I don't dive with more than 2 OW students during training but in these cases I just dive using tables. It's not hard since the NDL at 18m is 56 minutes and we're never deeper than 18m and seldom longer than 30 min for a training dive. Kind of a no-brainer.
Last summer I made a couple of "real" dives on tables with my daughter, who--although she was trained to understand tables--uses only the computer. This happened because the shop where we went only had one computer to rent. In my past I made the first 650 dives or so on tables so for me it wasn't a problem.
So what did I say to my daughter? If you're going on vacation just throw your computer in your backpack. If you need it, it's there. Those are the new realities. I can think of only a few dives that I wouldn't have been able to make if I had only been trained with computers and had never learned tables. In the future, that number will only continue to drop.
R..
