She appeared overnight on the corner of 16th and 5th Avenue in Manhattan gazing at mere mortals suggestively from above while straddling a boy-man perfectly posed and lustfully looking up at her.

Uptown, in Times Square more of her type pose, eat, drink and otherwise draw attention to themselves—and by association to the brands they are shilling for.

Downtown, giant billboards hover over Houston Street; the most arresting being a beautiful girl biting a beautiful boy’s ass on behalf of a jeans company. While suggestive messages with conflicting sexual overtones from jeans, perfume and liquor brands are nothing new, the same can’t be said about the size and the photographic quality of images on billboards, screens and, more often, entire sides of buildings.

New York City is outdoor advertising heaven. Thousands of billboards, phone kiosks and spectaculars are available to anyone with a media budget. Often, the most visible spaces are booked in advance and landlords look at the walls that hold up their buildings not just as structural necessities but cash cows when positioned as media space ready to be covered with scantily clad individuals, sweaty bottles of spirits, expensive watches, supple leathers, crisp shirts, celebrities or media personalities retouched over silly backgrounds.

The power of advertising dollars and technology together is amazing isn’t it? It’s the power to control our physical environment; own our peripheral vision, our air space and sightlines, as well as the rate at which they are altered.

In a way we owe the development of rich, large-format printing and its durability outdoors to the big corporations, ad agencies, media mavens, brand managers and creatives with high standards who consistently commission it—supporting the industry, its suppliers and manufacturers.

Still, given the impact that images have on our collective psyche, it makes me sad that advertisers—often those with the most innocuous of selling messages—are the only ones who can afford to or think to take advantage of this progress.

Most large-format images in the public realm are commercial in subject. Aimed at consumers, not to be confused with individuals with minds of their own and the capacity to think beyond the surface. Each day, so called “marketing experts,” lump people into dehumanizing categories based on age and socioeconomic background and rightfully take advantage of all available technologies to sell their brands and products.

A fan of truthful and beautiful advertising, a believer in the power of meaningful design, I am awed by what we are able to, and trusted to, do as conceptual and visual communicators—but I can’t get over how little of what is at our disposal is put to use for purposes other than selling. Is the value of a visual message directly related to the sponsor’s profit margin? Why can’t we use a fraction of our outdoor media resources selflessly, to simply inform and connect with each other through visual communication, as opposed to using every inch of available space encouraging people to part with their hard earned money?

Think about the difference in our visual landscape if just one of those billboards on Houston Street was a picture of giddy Afghan children posing for the camera despite the pestering flies in front of a backdrop of their war-torn nation?

What if just one of the two eight-story walls graced with Paris Hilton and her pet du jour, was replaced with a portrait of an African woman gripping pictures of members of her family who’d perished from AIDS?

What if the side of one in 50 buildings available as media was covered with pictures that document the human condition around the world?

What if for just one minute each day, all the glittering digital billboards in Times Square were replaced with raw, true, current, meaningful images from around the world?

Each year, Dick Clark shows the crowds at Times Square how the rest of the world is bringing in the New Year; in real time. What if that technology and media space were used to show us how regular people are going about their lives in Iraq, Israel, Cambodia or Sudan?

What if?