At school, why is "cheating" seen as a negative, when in the real world, it is seen as normal and even expected for you to consult reference material, and subcontract tasks to other people?

It is like in grade school up to grade 9 you are expected to know how to use pen and paper for math and not be dependent on a calculator. After grade 9 you are welcome to use a calculator. For cheating, as an adult, you are expected to know the basics before graduating , just in case you get a real job. Afterwards you can hire a sub-contractor to do the work.

I don’t think your examples are cheating.

In school sometimes there are open book tests. In college level finance course I could use a programmable calculator.

Some basics you need to know, I don’t think schools are wrong about that. But, I do think schools take it too far some of the time, and probably more tests could be open book.

You don’t want to have to google every two minutes when having a conversation, because you don’t have anything memorized. Moreover, we use what is in our memories to form logical patterns, to be able to come up with logical hypothesis, narrow down information. There is value in memorization as much as it is under fire right now.

Being able to look at numbers and be able to see they don’t make sense before actually doing the full out calculation, comes from knowing how to do calculations without a calculator.

Someone telling me they live 60 miles north of Orlando I can picture, because I know where Orlando is, I don’t need to google it. I know where most major cities are in all states, but the ones I don’t I at least know where the state is, the basic shape of the state, and can ask where the city is in the state.

Sometimes google isn’t available.

In school, it is seen as negative because the schooling is scrutinized by honest, corrective, civilized people. Out in society, cheating isn’t really allowed, it’s just that so many people have been allowed to get away with it, and have the idea that it’s only considered cheating if one gets caught.
For example, in a court of law one is considered “innocent until proven guilty” but people act like one is, or should be, guilty until proven innocent.