WE LIVE IN A WORLD IN WHICH instant access is the top priority. Fast-food outlets are now the norm. People are no longer prepared to wait for a conventionally cooked meal, but are they cheating themselves? Are they eating well?
     It seems that in popularising an activity, it can lose some of its focus. This seems to be happening in many areas of activity.
     Not so long ago, I took a cable-car from Cervinia to Plan Maison and spent the day with the baby while the rest of my family skied the prepared pistes. This gave me the chance to join in conversations with lots of other skiers when they broke for a burger at the restaurant.
     They talked about where they would go that evening and about what happened at the disco the night before. They discussed ski-wear and bindings and the degrees of difficulty on different runs.
     No one mentioned that we were sitting in one of the world's most spectacular locations, under the southern side of the Matterhorn, the very reason that the original skiing pioneers had struggled up here, risking life and limb.
     Few modern visitors stop to think what a dangerous place Plan Maison could be if the basic necessities of life, artificially imported, were withdrawn.
     Diving, too, used to be thought of as dangerous and for only a select few. I recently went with Red Sea diving pioneer Jan Ellingsen to do a project using a dayboat from Hurghada.
     Jan was bemused that few of the divers on our boat talked about what they had seen on the dive. During surface intervals, they talked about their equipment, their computers, and difficulties with technique they had encountered under water.
     They talked about how deep they went and how long their air lasted. They talked about pop music, movies or books. Some talked about their cameras or the quality of the film they used.
     It was very much like the skiing experience I mentioned. Few talked about what they had seen under water. It made me wonder why they went diving.
     When something gets to be popular it invariably gets changed. In the early '90s, when Jan was still skippering a Red Sea liveaboard, most of the passengers were competent divers who went under water to see what they could discover. They dived in buddy pairs and were left largely to their own devices. They were interested in the natural world, and fish-ID books were much in evidence between dives.
     Today most diving seems to be done in large groups that follow a leader armed with a rattle to keep it under control. Its members concentrate on maintaining their position, so spend most of their time looking at other divers.
     This is not purely a Red Sea phenomenon; it has been imported from across the Atlantic. It's all about reducing the risk to the operator of litigation.
     There are still operators who offer the wonders of discovering the inimicus devilfish in Lembeh Strait, or the chance to swim with hammerheads at Cocos, but with so many people now wanting to scuba-dive and in an increasingly litigious society, legal considerations such as duty of care usually take precedence over the quality of the experience.
     As with skiing, we've tried to make scuba-diving as safe as possible. Yet neither sport can be undertaken without risk. You can break a leg on the prepared piste but to go off-piste is often considered foolhardy.
     Similarly, you can hurt yourself in the hostile environment that the sub-aqua world provides. But stopping even briefly to look around will later cause derision and a certain amount of chastisement from both dive-guide and fellow-divers. You must keep up with the group.
     People sometimes forget those pioneer skiers who fought their way up to Plan Maison before either the cable-car or the restaurant was built. Few of the massed ranks of skiers discussing last night's disco at the restaurant get to know the delights of skiing over fresh powder.
     Commercial diving operators might put safety first, but just as you don't choose a restaurant simply for convenience or because there is little chance of getting food poisoning, you don't do a dive only because it is safe.
     International fast-food outlets have changed many people's eating habits for better or worse, but we need to eat Ð we don't need to dive.
     Organised skiing gives vast numbers access to the mountains and, properly run, safe scuba-diving gets huge numbers into the water.
     So if you ever catch that cable-car from Cervinia, take time to marvel at the Matterhorn. When diving and following the dive-guide, or the diver in front, spend time examining the surroundings.
     The animals don't rush out to say hello. You have to look for them. It's a wildlife safari, not a trip to the Natural History Museum. And unlike wildlife safaris on land, you have the chance to get right up close to the animals.
     Remember to focus on the real reason for diving and you'll discover that it's a wonderful world down there.