A week without information

There's been some discussion online about the effect that Google's withdrawl (sort of) from the Chinese market will have for the company and for that country. Much of it is speculation because at the end of the day it doesn't effect us at all. But there are some interesting ideas that have arisen which bare some consideration.
In a recent article, one Chinese citizen said that Google's actions make it hard for the population to get the information in needs for daily living, which is an unusual statement to make.

Necessary information for daily living?
What is that?

Sure, it's handy to know what the weather is going to be like tomorrow, or if there are any events happening on the weekend. But how much information are we given that is actually necessary for living? I'm thinking it's not that much.
Actually, I'm hoping it's not much! Yet another article found that over 60% of articles published in print media are actually PR releases for products or services. These pre-made articles are presented as journalism, but amount for little more than ad pitches.

Which leads me to two cool ideas. First off, we might not see vital information when it's presented to us. If I wasn't aware of the volume of ads disguised as news, and advertisements are essentially worthless to day-to-day living, then most of the information I get online and from print is actually filler. Fun to read, but not necessary.
Secondly, there has to be an easy way to find out what information is necessary for living, and what isn't.

I read a blog the other day where someone did a quick experiment of going a week without using a Google product. For this, he did without the search engine, but also gmail, Google maps, etc. A neat idea, but I didn't like the story he presented. It seems to me he just skimmed the surface of something larger. For him, he was more interested in seeing how hard it would be to do without Google for a week.

I'd like to cast my net further. How about a week without information?

So I'm going to go a week without any news at all. No Yahoo, MSNBC, Talkingpointsmemo, buzzflash. Heck, I'll even skip The Guardian.

From this I should be able to determine what information is actually necessary for living. And if I need a guess on the weather, I'll just look out the window.