Does my title of finding how to make the world better by designing better scuba fins seem unusual, to put it mildly? The truth is that a small thing like scuba design is indicative of why humanity is stuck in a planet-destroying rut. Too many people are competitively trying to make a quick buck from only slightly modifying an existing innovation, instead of cooperatively attempting to make some quantum leaps for the long term good of both our world and our human species.
In the 1960’s, we were putting humans on the moon: at least we did if you disbelieve some conspiracy theorists’ claiming it was faked. We people ought to be ashamed that in the nearly fifty years since the Apollo flights, nearly zilch has been built on it. If we weren’t so inwardly focused, money lustful and resources wasteful, colonization of the moon would’ve been well underway and our objective would be set on Mars and beyond. The young people of today would be braving new worlds in reality, instead of blowing their lives and energies on playing computer games. Shame, Shame on us!
Look at the newest scuba fin designs. I’ve linked to some performance data on trials these were subjected to. Now closely examine the results of previous year’s scuba fins models: the differences are minute at best and utterly pointless when one considers that the sport of scuba isn’t competitive. Whether one can cover a distance in a fraction of a second less time is of practically zero consequence—yet time, money and creative energies were devoted to it, because advertising can put some sales spin on the data. A basic look at today’s top performing scuba fin is not much different from the first frogman flippers. Shame, Shame on scuba gear designers and marketers!
I’ve been working on a new short novel ‘I Live in my Scuba Gear‘. The hero has won 4 Olympic gold medals in swimming by innovating his kick. He developed a new way of swimming, by studying reef fish and thinking of how he could make his human body mechanics work ergonomically like a fish’s tail. Is this possible in real life? I don’t know: I’m neither a muscular specialist nor an ichthyologist. I’m a fiction writer with an imagination and some original thoughts but I don’t see how it couldn’t be theoretically possible. Richard Fosbury’s way of jumping an Olympic high bar radically changed that sport. How does this equate to scuba fin design?
What if the talent, brains, research and resources that went into the worthless new changes in scuba fins were pooled towards seeking a radical new improvement? I’m thinking of something like a cross between a mermaid’s lower half and two toes of a frog’s webbed feet. Try to picture the fantastic scuba fin performance improvement when the whole surface of both legs and an area of membrane in between are giving forward thrust, with the same muscle energy expenditure that’s going into making just two fins kick. The military has long known that cutting the weight of footwear by half, double the weight that can be put into the backpack. Maybe the scuba industry could derive all the thrust from the legs and have only streamlined slippers on the feet that mostly act as a rudder.
However, the prevalent corporate philosophy is to plunder the earth’s raw materials, production capacity, and human ingenuity to make a mousetrap slightly lighter, marginally faster, a bit flashier looking than last season’s model, and somewhat more expensive one, just for the sake of profit—when it’s still an old style mousetrap that often kills the mouse in an inhumanely painful way. And the newest scuba fins are still just like the ones of 50 years ago. Big whoop! And more Shame, Shame!
You want to know how to make the world better? Start asking for improvements in the smallest things like radically redesigned scuba gear. Then push for a really new mousetrap and see what develops from there. Tell governments to stop emulating and catering corporation wastrels and to rebuild an aggressive space program. Some of us should already be living on the moon right now in 2009. But if people don’t start asking for a forward looking vision, the lunar surface will be just as uninhabited in 2059, 2109, 2159 and 2209 as it is today. Shame, double-shame and triple-shame on the people of the last 50 years—and today!
