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It began as a way to tell a better story.

A small, semi-transparent rectangle floating in midair above home plate, first rolled out by ESPN in 2001, showed something approaching the strike zone of a Major League Baseball player. As a flat and rigid representation of a fluctuating and notional three-dimensional space, it wasn’t perfect. But it gave viewers some sense of what players, pitchers and umpires were figuring out in real time: What counts as a ball and a strike in the most subjective of all spectator sports ?

Armed with footage of strike calls that sailed wide of the supposed mark, supplemented by cameras wedged into the masks of umps and catchers, commentators had proof of umpires’ various tendencies to expand or contract the plate. To be sure, it was an improvement. Compared to the cheesy comet-tails that NBC began editing into slo-mo pitch replays in the ‘80s, ESPN’s ghostly “K-Zone” felt deadly serious: a technological marvel for an objective, computer-assisted age.

Anyone reading this on an internet-connected device in 2026 already knows the trajectory of that technical breakthrough. Surveillance software sprouted in every cranny of the ballpark, first in service of providing more data, then as fuel for ever more esoteric betting propositions. Telecasts became crowded with inscrutable advanced metrics and probabilities. The meta-reality and meta-commentary of the broadcast encroached on and finally overtook the game on the field. Major League Baseball made it official this season, introducing the automated-balls-and-strikes system.

Essentially a robot umpire that pitchers, catchers and batters can appeal to, ABS seeks to kill the subjectivity of strike calls. Based on measurements of ballplayers’ dimensions (but not, crucially, the stance individual players take at the plate), ABS makes the television strike zone into the actual one.

Early in the 2026 season, it has already made for great TV. (Just listen to the crowd roar when a call is overturned in favor of the Cincinnati Reds’ Eugenio Suarez.) But we’ve seen this story play out before.

A neat new feature aims to get rid of a pain point and make something easier and more efficient. Soon enough, it shoves out the old way of doing things entirely, leaving us with no living, breathing person left to hear our frustrations. Look at the stranglehold ridesharing apps have on hailing a cab. Make an effort to talk to human representatives of your insurance company. Try to buy literally anything online without wading through bot-addled marketplaces full of garbage. Don’t get us started on the way technocrats have infiltrated nearly every level of American politics, shielding their actual decisions behind polls and statistics.

Dressed up in the language of life-long bureaucrats and engineers, the tech-ification of everything can feel inevitable. The removal of the flesh-and-blood element in something so human as a ball game will be pitched as a great stride forward, but it’s actually a major loss.

Advancements that seek to end the friction of the reality – the freak occurrences, edge cases and bum luck of a given day – ultimately sap the world of excitement and color. What’s the point of watching a game that can be winnowed down to a series of inputs and outputs? What’s the point of carrying on if your day’s been reduced to nothing but consumer choices made via smartphone?

The problem is relatively new, but the solution is very, very old. It’s the same answer trotted out by the acolytes of the entirely-made-up Ned Ludd. It’s acted out on robotaxis, brought to halt by activists using strategically placed cones. We see it from every protester who has ever gone limp in the arms of state-sanctioned goons. The very messy humanity that these technical solutions seek to eradicate often become the best way to fight back against creeping technofascism. Become a real nuisance and tech boosters will eventually give up, handing the future back to the pestering, teeming masses.

On the flip side, a people-forward way of living, with a lot less technological intrusion, would definitely involve more annoyance. It would mean deleting your delivery apps, making phone calls to other humans, leaving the house and going shopping in person. It will mean accepting once again, however painful it may be, that balls and strikes are whatever the umpire says they are.

What do you think? Is a more annoying life more human? Should we strive for objectivity in sports? Sound off in the comments.

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