Remember that, for much of human history, rulers did not feel any particular need for public attention, and, indeed, usually tried to avoid it. Apart from rituals such as triumphal entry into the lands of a new subject people, dating back to the Romans, and the Royal Progress, the jaunt first undertaken in medieval times to “show the sacred body of the prince,” kings and queens once depended on the mystique of inaccessibility as an expression of power.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 129