So far most of the commercialisation of the Internet has occurred at a prurient level. In the main pornographic sites have prospered, while other business ventures have floundered along. Yet there are indications other sectors like on-line car dealers and travel services are slowly finding a customer base.

Now financial and investment firms are charging into cyberspace offering broking services directly over the computer. What's the attraction? They're finding out what the other firms have discovered -- the Internet is the democratisation of information. Surfers are using it to cut out the middleman, or at least come to them armed with the knowledge only their industry was privy to, and used to keep prices up.

Potential car buyers, for example are using the Internet to compare prices between dealerships and to glean facts and reliability history about different makes. Some sites even provide the once secret blue book prices for second hand cars, information which the salesmen used to their advantage. Surfers can now bully their dealers to get the best deal.

In the financial world sophisticated investors have found the Internet a useful source of information beyond what their harried broker is able to provide them. OK, not all the information is there, and it can be difficult to find, but the Internet is getting there as financial firms and brokerages find their niche among the jumble.

Investors can also shop around more easily for the best prices and the best brokerage service. Convenience, a wider range of choice, and price -- this is part of the promise the Internet holds and is beginning to fulfil, although the sceptics, and more than a few users, will still pour scorn upon that claim.

Internet brokerage could pose a real danger to firms on the Island. Now local investors can bypass them and go directly to US firms to buy and sell shares and mutual funds.

The sector is expanding rapidly. Ernst & Young found that 36 percent of financial firms in a survey said their most important technology investment would be in PC banking and the Internet. An increasing number of mutual fund companies are also gearing up to go on the Internet for what they expect will be a surge in trading through personal computers, analysts said.

So far the actual business on the Internet is minuscule. The Tower Group, a US consulting firm, estimates it is about one percent of the total brokerage market in the US.

With that kind of customer response, investment firms are proceeding cautiously on the Internet. The more aggressive discount brokers are leading the way over the more traditional full-service firms.

That the rise of Internet broking is important can be seen in the way traditional brokerages and stock exchanges try to protect their turf. The London Stock Exchange lost a court battle last year when it tried to prohibit real-time electronic posting of its prices by Tradepoint, a rival share-trading organisation.

Outlets for Internet business and investment information are already hurting services like Lexis-Nexis and Dow Jones News/Retrieval, which charged steep rates for access. Some analysts are predicting their $1 billion in sales last year could be cut by as much as a third within five years, according to the Bloomberg Business News -- itself a financial information company.

Discount brokerages like Charles Schwab & Co. (www.schwab.com), Datek Online (www.datek.com), e.Broker (www.ebroker.com), and Pacific Brokerage Services (www.tradepbs.com), E Trade (www.etrade.com) are some of the 30 or so firms currently offering Internet trading. Schwab is by far the leader in the field, controlling about half of the 1.5 million accounts worth $111 billion in on-line investing accounts.

Mutual fund companies like Fidelity Investments, Vanguard Group, T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. and American Century Investments are currently developing systems that will allow electronic trading of their products. Vanguard is going so far as predict that 60 percent of the company's interaction with customers will be through the Internet. American Century is predicting that 20 percent of its trading will be through the Internet by the year 2000.

Most firms still aren't allowing redemptions to guard against the chance of an unauthorised removal of money from an investor's account.

David Ware, President of the Bermuda Society of Chartered Financial Analysts, believes the Internet will launch the investment industry into a new age.

"We are going through a powerful technical process,'' he said. "A revolution is going on. It's going to go on whether we like it or not. It's a useful service for people who use it only for executing orders. It lowers the costs both for the broker and the customer.'' However he warns that security of the transaction is the main issue that has to be dealt with. There are encryption programs on the market and being developed to ensure privacy and security.

He also warns investors on the Internet to deal only with brokerage firms they know to be legitimate. The danger is that boiler room operations could easily set up on the Internet and pretend to sell stock.

Local firms will have to compete by focusing on providing value added services investors find useful. There will always be a need for investment advice and personal contact.

What's in the future? Perhaps one day the investment world will be transformed into one breathlessly forecast by the Economist magazine where "intelligent agents plan their clients' investment and transaction needs, constantly finding the best prices on 24-hour electronic financial markets and managing their assets to meet defined risk-reward targets.'' Can you smell the brokers sweating? Where to get information Here are some other Internet sites of interest to investors in no particular order.

canstock.com provides information on all mutual fund companies and over 1,700 individual funds. The site has information on daily net asset values, historical data and charts plus current interst, mortgage, bond and bank rates.

Quote.com provides quotes for a monthly subscription fee.

Money Talks (www.talks.com) is a personal finance online magazine.

Money Mangement AlertNET by Dow Jones & Co. (mma.dowjones.com) provides news, analysis, commentary and performance data on mutual fund and pension fund sectors. For a subscription fee, investors get daily performance data from Morningstar, and Lipper Analytical Services, among others. Investors can also subscribe to the The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition (www.wsj.com).

The paper has 100,000 subscribers, the largest paid subscription site on the Web.

The Bank of Montreal's InvestorLine discount brokerage service (www.bmo.com/investorline) provides online and automated telephone trading enter orders, account information, news and fee quotes.

Wall Street Access (www.wsaccess.com) connects investor to all the main US markets. The site provides updated prices, and automatically calculates portfolio values, creates charts and alerts the user when preset price limits are reached. It provides quotes on equites, mutal funds, options, indexes and foreign markets and electonic trading.