The notion that ads are a nuisance that must be blocked by whatever means necessary isn’t new. It goes way back, long before the Internet became overrun with banners, pop-ups, video ads, and all the other junk we deal with now. In the early days of the web, when it was still mostly the domain of the tech-savvy free of digital noise, the main battleground for ads was traditional media: TV, newspapers, and, sure enough, billboards.

And even though we now spend a growing chunk of our time online — sometimes even while standing in a store or walking down the street — the problem of infoxication and ad overload in real life hasn’t gone away. Flashy shop signs, towering digital billboards and rotating displays still manage to catch our eye whether we want it or not.

Sure, we can try to tune them out, but they do sneak back into our line of vision. Is the solution just to block them? It’s an idea that sounds futuristic, maybe even a little extreme. Some might argue that doing so risks cutting out more than just noise. Still, for many, the temptation to reclaim control is too strong to ignore, especially since much of what passes for “messaging” today feels more invasive than informative.

So it’s no surprise that developers are now trying to bring the logic of digital ad blockers into the physical world. But is it actually working — and, most importantly, is it doing more good than harm?