Gary, one of the big differences between the diving you are doing and technical diving is that the parameters of a technical dive are all pretty much set before you get in the water. You know how deep you are going to go, how long you are going to stay there, and how you are going to execute your ascent and stops, before you put your gear on. Recreational dives are almost always a lot more free-form, because what you do often depends on what you find to look at, and your dive can take many shapes within a generous set of outside limits (total dive time, no-deco limits, and gas supply). Believe it or not, a tech diver almost doesn't NEED the information from his gas gauge if the dive goes as planned, because he's figured out how much gas he's going to use at each point in the dive beforehand. The gauge is more to double-check that nothing is untoward -- no unnoticed leaks or increased breathing rate that would be unexpected.
In fact, this is the thing that some of us keep trying to bring to the recreational world, is this mindset of doing some planning of depth, time and gas BEFORE getting in the water. The recreational diver doesn't have to cut tables like somebody diving the Empress of Ireland, but it would reduce the instances of accidental deco and getting low on gas if people spent some time thinking about what they are going to do, and what resources they have to do it with, even on basic reef dives.
