Magic rune tablets that are all linked together, so that people can shout at each other from all over the realm, and so that the wizards can listen in on the population to stop them from rising up, destroying their mage towers and stealing all their magic gems

it's a bunch of goblins too lazy to speak directly, so to speak to a far away place they use metal machines that can speak louder, but they speak through a chain of metal and glass tubes, basically, the internet is a series of tubes