How do you handle driving on roads with billboards? Or walking through a city? In most of the US, the number of outdoor places you can go without advertising attacking you is dwindling. Europe seems better regarding roads (fewer billboards and more highways with none) but similar in cities.
The rise of blindingly bright LED billboards in the US feels like all the downsides of a sci-fi dystopian world without any of the upside like self-driving hover cars.
Actually, most billboards around the roads in Czech Republic are being dismantled due to being too startling to drivers - the advertisers fought it quite hard, even placed big Czech flags instead of adds to the billboards due to some provision in the law saying you can't just remove a flag of the country. But the ultimately list and billboards around roads are going away.
Also more thought is now being given to "visual pollution" where unsightly advertising is bastardising valuable architecture in cities.
Hopefully both initiatives will proliferate alse to other countries. :)
Good to hear :). I think in the US some places must be much worse than others. Here in Portland, Oregon, on a 7 mile round trip (without much overlap) through the urban core that I make regularly by bike I only see maybe four billboards, and all but one (a not too large sign of a stadium that mostly advertises events there) are the traditional paper type (or whatever it is that they use). Most are near highways or highway access so I assume anyone who uses highways regularly will see more of them. There are also some small advertisements (also not LCD) on bus shelters, although there aren't many bus shelters. I rarely notice any of them unless I am stopped at a traffic light near one. It took me a while to even remember most of them. I'd still prefer fewer of them, but it isn't at all comparable to using the web without an adblocker. Additionally, there is no chance that the billboards will install malware on my computer.
There's a fundamental difference between a billboard that is just sort of in your field of view as you walk down a street, and a billboard which blocks your path, not letting you continue on your way until you finish reading it from top to bottom.
The rise of blindingly bright LED billboards in the US feels like all the downsides of a sci-fi dystopian world without any of the upside like self-driving hover cars.