I wish, but in reality, I don't know many people with the same interests as me. I am sure that if anything important to anyone would happen, I would probably learn about it (like World War 3 starting or something), but other than that?
Example off the top of my head: I don't think anybody I know would have told me about the Netflix Challenge yet.
Toying around with it - certainly not expecting to win any money. Sure, "need" can be defined in all sorts of ways, not only with respect to news. Perhaps it would be most efficient to live like a reclusive monk?
Well, I found that I was spending hours a day on reddit, slashdot, and N.YC before I realized that most of the "news" I was getting had no direct or indirect impact on my life. Now, I mostly just read the headlines on the other sites. This is the only one that I often read articles on, much less comment about.
It was a huge time sink for me to be concerned about things that don't matter. :)
Example off the top of my head: I don't think anybody I know would have told me about the Netflix Challenge yet.