It’s the age-old question that could pertain to any number of things in life: Are we better off now than we were before all this stuff started? Or words to that effect.

The general subject is officiating in all our favorite team sports, and the raging issue is technology. Football, baseball, basketball, and hockey games now include the sight of headphoned officials huddled around a television monitor, in the hopes of, you know, “getting it right.’’ In some cases they are actually trying to determine what the heck just happened.

In theory, this is wonderful. “Getting it right’’ is a worthy objective. I mean, who could argue with that?

Some of it I really like. Was it a home run or not? Did the ball come loose before the guy hit the ground (although I do have a problem with that concept, that being a story for another day)? Did the puck cross the line or not? The basketball went out of bounds off which guy? Thanks to technology, we can settle these matters, and more.

However . . .

The idea basically is that once an official makes a call, it can be overturned only if there is irrefutable evidence to change it. All too often the “evidence’’ is fuzzy. They run the tape and run the tape and rerun the tape. Perhaps they come to the conclusion that the call should be overturned, based on multiple viewings.

My feeling is that if the difference is that infinitesimal, then the original call should stand. I’d invoke a Two-Look Rule: If you can’t tell after two looks, that’s it. But that’s just me. Oh, that’s right. There can be different angles. Fine. Two looks per angle. Fine.

Don’t you think NFL officials have become completely spooked by the specter of review? They often seem as if they really don’t want to make a call, fearing that it will be overturned anyway.

And I really can’t imagine being an NBA official any longer. This business of reviewing games and then issuing an ex post facto announcement of officiating errors to the public makes no sense to me. All it does is embarrass the referees in question and inflame the aggrieved parties.

The referees in the infamous Spurs-Thunder Game 2 are alleged to have “blown’’ five calls in the final 13 seconds. And you can bet that if someone had tooted a whistle on the non-calls near the basket, many people would have complained that “the players should decide the game.’’ You know it and I know it.

So what purpose was served by trumpeting to the world those allegations? Keep the opinion in-house. Is it supposed to make the people who didn’t get the call(s) feel better? Now Warriors coach Steve Kerr knows that traveling should have been called on Russell Westbrook in Game 1 of their series with the Thunder. Terrific. Now what?

Does it make the NBA higher-ups feel good about themselves that they can boast to the world how transparent they are? All they have done is subject themselves to deserved ridicule. People already harbor eternally negative feelings about the officials. Outlining their alleged “errors’’ is not going to elevate their status in the eyes of the general public. It’s all the more foolish because the job is ridiculously difficult to begin with. Criticisms and evaluations should remain private.

On the subject of baseball, we are sliding down a slippery slope that may someday lead to the elimination of the home plate umpire, at least when it comes to balls and strikes. I know there are people who want do away with the human factor. I am not one of those people.

I agree that the umpires don’t help themselves with their various individual strike zones, but that is something I believe could be corrected with tougher supervision. The leagues set the strike zone the way they want it, and that’s that.

Back in the old days, it was a given that because the American League umps held large chest protectors in front of them and the National League umps did not, AL umps did not see the low strike as well. That is no longer the case, since no one uses the large protectors any longer and the umps are now one big (presumably) happy family.

I just think there would be something creepy about it if a robot or some piece of modern technology were given the task of calling balls and strikes.

What I really wonder is if this great embrace of technology was really necessary in the first place. We really did get along very nicely for decades without it. I bet if we went back to examine the history of each sport, we would find surprisingly few truly egregious errors that altered the course of sports history.

Oh sure, every fan has a catalog of grievances concerning officiating atrocities that adversely affected his or her favorite team. This is especially true in basketball, but it would certainly hold for each sport. But in most cases we are talking about judgments that would not be affected by the new technology. We are talking about emotional, often irrational, responses to calls, or non-calls, that went against their team.

Yes, it’s true that Celtics fans of a certain age will never forget the 1973 Jack Madden/Jake O’Donnell officiating fiasco in Game 4 at Madison Square Garden. Patriots fans of a certain age will never forget Ben Dreith’s “roughing the passer’’ joke call in the Oakland Coliseum three years later. Those were judgment calls and non-calls. They were not going to be challenged.

But think about it: How many game-altering officiating travesties were there, out of the thousands of games played in the entire 20th century? The most notorious, I would submit, is the blown play at first base by umpire Don Denkinger in Game 6 of the 1985 World Series. If he had gotten that call right, the Cardinals would have won the World Series. Instead, the Royals came back to win that game and the seventh game, as well. Then again, the Cardinals might have put up a better fight in Game 7 than 11-0.

I haven’t even mentioned the time factor. The last thing baseball needs is something that prolongs the game.

Let’s go back to the original question. Was life really so bad prior to all this onslaught of technology? Well?

Bob Ryan’s column appears regularly in the Globe. He can be reached at ryan@globe.com.