Values have to change. The sum total of those changes is transformation. Technology is both an end in itself and a means to other ends. When you figure something out and make it work, there is pleasure and excitement. Not just because the technology is going to do something, but because you created something with its own inherent beauty, like art, like literature, like music.
Denial can blind.
It is a very important truism that immigrants and immigration are what made America what it is. We must be vigilant as a nation to have a tolerance for differences, a tolerance for new people. When you have cancer, there's always a finite chance that it will recur, so talking about the whole experience in past tense is a little presumptuous. So yes, I have faced the prospect of dying, of having a specific cause of mortality hanging over my head for the rest of my life. But I don't think the experience changed me, not that either I or anyone close to me has been able to spot.