How many hours spent “watching the news”—in any of the various mediums and regardless of any political slant— would be necessary to understand the current events of the world? Perhaps with a supercomputer parsing the Internet and with the ability to simultaneously watch a set of international television stations could an individual come close to gaining an idea of all the notable events around the world during a single moment. But the answer cannot be quantified in this way—in fact there isn’t an answer. Even with this scenario, the individual may eventually succeed in becoming aware of the significant events globally, but the question is how much does the individual understand?

Mainstream media, to an extent, succeeds in the above endeavor each day—supercomputers scan the Internet and reporters search around the world. But in the up-to-the-minute onslaught of breaking news, the viewer is aware of every event while remaining very much oblivious to the surrounding circumstances of each. The data is devoid of context—the facts are often without historic or analytical details—and the individual is deprived of understanding.