Farcaster is a Car

Farcaster's growth problem, the article argues, is that its founders treat it as another social network, when it is a new technology that must create a new medium and behavior to succeed, much as the car needed a test drive to win buyers. The author compares Farcaster to Karl Benz's early automobile and says it needs a "Bertha Benz" to show its usefulness, pointing to Bertha Benz's 1888 long-distance drive as the demonstration that made cars sell. The article proposes a "mobile self" with portability, sovereignty and composability, which it says could restore the context that Jenny Odell argues social feeds collapse.