Culture Shock

So to say a bit about myself. All my life I was very sheltered by my family, always being kept in a shoe box inside of a massive shoe store so to speak. I never really thought much about it to be honest. I just went about my life with certain "guidelines" When social media became a thing, I never got involved in it. To this day, this site is the only form of social media I use. But that's not what I want to talk about. Basically because I was so used to having a simple outlook on life and what I could do with myself I never really took to time to look at what I didn't know, culturally speaking. I still struggle today to understand internet culture even. So for the past few years now, I have been basically been working from home, like a lot. I mean so much to the point that I would leave home about once a month or so. So basically for the last... 3 years I think, I have gone outside a total of 40 times (by outside I mean leave the area of my home and go into town) So I had to go renew my driver's license recently, and when I went into the place to do that, I was completely consumed by shock. What I once remembered as a simple process of "grabbing a ticket and waiting your turn to be called" was no longer a thing. Instead I was greeted by a touch screen with complicated instructions giving me a choice between publicly displaying my cell number to everyone in the room or going through a 7 step process to get a ticket, which was printed in a hard to get to location. Sitting there seeing so many people just putting the phone numbers on public display just had me so confused, to me I thought it would be so easy for someone to just stalk someone else. Is this normal now? Using touch screens for everything and putting up private information for all eyes to see? After that, a friend wanted to see me and took me to restaurant, which also had touchscreens to order, no human interaction happened at all to order food whatsoever and the only time we saw someone was when our food was delivered to our table. When I drove home later that night, I remarked how it was the first time in years I was driving at night and I noticed that my head lights were so dim by comparison to everyone else's cars. Apparently I don't have crazy bright LED bulbs like everyone else, but man all of those bright lights from the other cars just made it so much harder for me to see, when I got on to the not so busy roads I was able to see just fine with my car's headlights. Just seeing the difference between by lights and everyone else's lights was quite shocking for me. I'm sure all of this sounds silly to you guys, but to me this is real culture shock, this whole time I thought the world was the same place I remembered and now that I have taken the time to go out and see all the changes that have occurred in my area, it has really terrified me in such a strange way. I can't help but ask why are all of these changes happening? What is wrong with the way things were before? If anything these "advancements" just make things more complicated than they were originally. I can't help but feel very out of place, like I am walking in a word I don't belong in. I feel like I think I can understand a bit better whenever I hear an elderly person say that they miss the old days, the world keeps changing and it isn't so easy for everyone to keep up with all of these changes. Sometimes these changes make no sense and that is the most frustrating part. How do you guys feel about my experience? Am I just weird for getting so shocked by this stuff? Have any of you felt the same as me? Or do you all like the new changes? I am curious to know how other people see this world we live in now. EDIT: I live in a fairly civilized area. It all used to be farmland decades ago and is now very much urbanized. I live like 20 minutes away from a major city. I used to live in New York City not too long ago, so I am no stranger to city life. Friends in NYC tell me they don't even have some of these things yet. To me it doesn't make sense that my area would have these changes, I would expect a major city like New York to have them first.

Automation is becoming more and more prevalent and with the advancement of technology progressing as rapidly as it has been, it is only natural computers, machines, and touchscreens will replace most of things that were once done by hand. You can also thank the people who want hire minimum wages for this. Why pay a human big bucks when you can install a machine once and then a technician to maintain it once in a while. No of course there are some precautions that need to be addressed before we advance too quickly, but I feel a lot of the resistance to such progress may be rooted in fear of the unknown, which is understandable. Otherwise, I am all for what is most convenient for most people as long as there is no potential harm involved.

You sure you are not an amish? Also no idea what are you refering to about the thing displaying the phone number to everyone rofl Maybe that technology is not here yet.

^I was about to add, where does this guy live? I renewed my license a little over a year ago in November 2017, I don't remember there being touchscreens, just wait in line until you're called.

I updated the first post to give an idea of where I live. I am not amish by any means. I use all kinds of tech and equipment in the kind of work that I do. Seeing all of this tech commonplace in public is what freaks me out. A lot of the tech I saw did not improve anything at all, in fact it just made things harder to use if anything. Also as for the screens with the phone numbers displayed, it makes no sense to me why that should be used instead of a ticket with a simple number. The screen showed the order of the people to be called, apparently if you gave your phone number they would text you when it was your turn, but it's pointless since they call for you anyways. Still to show everyone's numbers like that makes no sense to me.