Corrected entry: Carter seems to be frazzled by the time anomaly, and acts as though he's never dealt with a time distortion before. But back in Season 2, not only did he learn that time travel/distortion was possible, he experienced it first hand by going back in time, four years into the past to stop Henry from saving Kim.
What Goes Around, Comes Around - S3-E18
Corrected entry: Even though technology could be made to remotely control a person, they'd still have to have a body tailored for certain activities. Zoe has never trained for diving, and thus her body (and presumable all of the other divers) is not used to performing those kinds of feats.
Correction: It doesn't matter what Zoe's body isn't used to, it only matters what she is capable of (so the device couldn't make Zoe fly, but could certainly make her dive).
Correction: Henry used a device to erase Carter's memory of the future, so as far as he knows he never encountered time distortions before.