Howard Gossage:

It is so strange that billboards exist at all that the current controversy about whether outdoor advertising should be allowed along federal highways achieves the unreality of a debate on whether witch burning should be permitted in critical fire areas. Apparently no one has thought to wonder just what in the hell billboards are doing anywhere.

The automobile: the very thing that made possible outdoor advertising’s greatest prosperity also contained the germ of its certain doom. The billboard, you might say, is dying of success. If only the horse had never been replaced, outdoor advertising, in modest flower, might have been tolerated indefinitely.

Outdoor advertising is peddling a commodity it does not own and without the owner’s permission: your field of vision. Possibly you have never thought to consider your rights in the matter.

See also:

This odious billboard appears in my town, encouraging me to rat on my neighbours because I don't understand what they throw away.

Two from the archive:

It is ironic: people don’t notice that noticing is important!

EyeTap technology comprises eyeglasses or contact lenses that cause the eye itself to function, in effect, as if it were both a camera and a display.

Louis Menand:

The interstates changed the phenomenology of driving.