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You'd think that secretive, insidery New York would take to the Intemet like teenage girls to the back of the bus. You would expect the world's most gossipy city to instantly hyperlink its 8 million tales into a Langian urban lattice of billets-doux and intrigue, with every interstice as glamorous and potentially explosive as that hot line from the Bat Cave to Commissioner Gordon's office.
If you didn't live here, you might think that-if you didn't witness firsthand, and daily, the naked revulsion with which average Gothamites skirt their neighbors. In time, New York may cease panicking about the very idea of the Net, this fundamentally West Coast medium, this fascist state founded on friendliness. But not as long as businesspeople keep banking on New Yorkers' supposedly latent sense of community, and building us New York
centric Web sites.
In February, America Online spent $5 million on a small-time, literate listing service called Total New York (www.totalny.com), a move that likely anticipated Microsoft's May launch of New York Sidewalk (www.newyork.sidewalk.com). They both offer movie listings, restaurant reviews and the like, served up with lashing of what used to be known as "gritty urban prose driven...