It is 2 December 1917, a year after the death of the Emperor Franz Joseph. His was a reign that lasted almost seventy years and became a byword for stability in central Europe much as Queen Victoria’s did in the English-speaking world. In one of the Empire’s provincial capitals, Dr Franz Kafka, an accident insurance specialist, writes a starveling fable in what is now known as the Blue Octavo Notebook. It spells out a concise metaphysics of mass-mediated communications.

‘They were given the choice of becoming kings or regal messengers. The way children are, they all wanted to be messengers. That’s why there are more and more messengers hotfooting across the world and proclaiming, in the absence of kings, messages to each other that have become meaningless. They would like to put an end to their miserable lives but dare not because of their oath of service.’

The final sentence darkens the perfect image of ‘little angels’ unhappy at having made an ostensive declaration of fidelity to the imperial courier business. In Kafka’s fable, the vocation of being regal envoys or emissaries has displaced all the others. It’s the only game in town. If exchange is fundamental to human flourishing, these children’s singular choice was right on the money. Lots of messengers whizzing around suggests a wealthy realm: power is the ability to control a territory though messages – read transport and transmission.

But where are the layers of society between kings and their subjects? Kings are important persons, they importune. They need mediators. So where ...