THE FUTURE IS NOW; OUR LOOK AT THE 21ST-CENTURY WHAT KEEPING UP WITH THE JETSONS - ER, JONES - WILL BE LIKE IN THE 21ST CENTURY.

Byline: David Bloom and Barbara DeWitt Staff Writers

Those who predict the future should be condemned to live in it. But having passed a large, if arbitrary, signpost in time, it's a good occasion to look forward, to see what the world could be like a quarter of the way through the century that starts today.

In the years to come, you can bet that more transformative technologies like the 20th century's Internet, birth-control pill and microwave ovens will blindside us, gulping chunks of our lives and spitting out something very different.

That said, the Daily News talked to a couple of dozen people who spend their days at the edge of now, looking forward. Life will be different, and probably in a lot of ways, they told us.

But we can probably count on one thing: It won't be much like the lives of that ``typical family of the 21st century,'' the Jetsons, with their airborne flivvers and space-age styles. Instead, we offer a more likely vision of a typical morning in 2025:

The gentle woof of your AIROBOT mechanical dog wakes you at 7 a.m., your LycraLethr slippers gently gripped in its drool-free, carbon-fiber mouth. Its eyes literally light up as you arise.

The bedroom sensor of your HausFrau smart-home network also notices you're awake, and reverses the polarity of polymer linings in the house's south- and east-facing windows, blinking them from dark to transparent to let the morning sunlight in.

Still a bit woozy from the exertions of last night's Netgame of Eco-Defender on your PlayStation 8 home media controller, you stumble into the kitchen.

Maybe, at 55, you're getting a little old to hang with the kids in the big Eco-Defender fragfests. It may be time to buy a better avatar and a gaming exoskeleton to boost your performance. After all, you never can tell who may be watching the contest, especially during tournament play.

Noting your groggy demeanor, the HausFrau has already set the coffee maker to brew the java a little stronger this morning. Its melodic female voice also suggests you take a couple of extra ``nutriceuticals,'' the life-enhancing drugs you get through the government-run Personal Care HealthNet established after the big HMO bustout of 2009.

You normally take the anti-aging blend preferred by your elders, the baby boomers, who are still clutching their faded youth even as some of them lurch toward a relatively fabulous 80. Today, with some demanding work ahead, you add a couple of the Memory Pakk tabs your children prefer, especially on test days, to boost their ability to retain and recall information.

You sit down to your SmartReader personal communicator-organizer, which has filtered through the ocean of available information for the mix of world and business news you like.

It also pulls down sports stories about your alma mater, any pieces about you or your friends, and, because you're divorced, ads by potentially compatible singles from within your Geographic Acceptability Radius. You've also tweaked the SmartReader's Serendipity Filter to randomly mix in some unexpected stories, vid programs and music.

The SmartReader is voice activated, whispering to you through the tiny EarDrop microphone/speaker in your ear. It has a thin, touch-sensitive, high-resolution screen, but you chose a thicker model, with its reassuring booklike solidity, for reasons of nostalgia as much as anything.

Your children actually prefer sheet-thin Sony VAIOmats that they can also slip in an inner pocket of their brilliantly colored Levi's cotton/NuRon ThinkJackets. The VAIOmats even run the jackets' graphics programs, splashing the latest downloaded designs and music across the fabric's surface.

Today's news is, unsurprisingly, a bit grim in many parts of the world:

--The Indonesian archipelago, with its hundreds of languages and thousands of islands, has been Exhibit 1 in the bloody worldwide wave of secession movements that have erased many of the old post-colonial political boundaries. The archipelago, which has already spawned 17 new countries in 26 years, is facing another messy breakup that requires the presence of the UN World Police.

--In the Arabian peninsula, dissident Shi'ite guerillas keep lofting ballistic missiles laden with nasty chemicals into Saudi settlements and tourist resorts. The guerrillas want the trillions of dollars in Saudi assets accumulated before hydrogen fuel cells rendered the worldwide oil shortage moot.

--Another huge F5 tornado ripped through several exclusive Texas enclaves built to house the nation's many elderly, well-off retirees. The winds are part of a worldwide pattern of powerful storms blamed in part on continued global warming.

--The United Nations Information Secretariat announced a new effort to control the proliferation of private currencies, the increasing popularity of which had been blamed for the dollar's 2009 and 2017 collapses. Given the many pirate data havens such as the Turks and Caicos Islands, however, observers said the new effort would fail.

--Locally, South Los Angeles Mayor Janice Hahn-Rivera said Dee Dee Buss had agreed to bring her L.A. X-Flyers extreme sports team to the Coliseum, installing a halfpipe and motocross track among other improvements to the historic structure. Preservationists worried that the hill required for the street luge would endanger or obscure the structure's famous peristyle.

The X-Flyers would be the Coliseum's first pro-tenant since football died out and Major League Soccer team owners refused to grant L.A. a second franchise because of security concerns.

Done with the news, you also check your stocks' performance in Tokyo's Nikkei and Paris' Le Bourse exchanges. You pulled out of Hong Kong's Hang Sen exchange last month to protest the violent crushing of south China's secessionist movement. The world boycott had sent tremors through the Chinese Red Army's financial holdings, and led to a purge the past two weeks of political officers blamed for the fiasco.

You also note with satisfaction the money you made overnight selling surplus power from your house's fuel-cell generator to the grid.

After your shower, you look in the mirror. Chances are the person looking back at you will be older, single or divorced, bilingual, Latino, possibly with biracial children whose mixed heritage is unremarkable in the region's mish-mash of cultures.

You pull on the new temperature-sensitive shirt you bought yesterday at Nordstrom's mind-blowing Shopping Experience store. The shirt's changing colors will go nicely with the roller shoes your shopping-agent software plucked off Ross/Marshall's surplus site last month.

You empty the last of the milk into a glass, then toss the jug into the trash can, where it is compacted and sorted into a recyclables bin. The trash can's bar-code reader also tells HausFrau to order more milk from the WebPod grocery delivery service.

While munching your no-cholesterol eggs from genetically enhanced free- range chickens, you use the SmartReader to investigate the cost of a weekend singles getaway to NEO-Universal, the Near-Earth-Orbit space hotel and theme park stationed about 40 miles overhead.

In space, you'll give your weary bones a break from the rigors of earth's gravity, while trying ultimate bungee jumping and Universal's new immersion adventure, Terminator 8: Beyond Outer Space. And of course, maybe you'll meet someone else on the singles cruise interested in exploring other beneficial aspects of zero gravity.

You can also use the SmartReader to send and read messages, pull up the text of what used to be books and newspaper articles, make voice calls, maintain your finances, schedule appointments to see your children, play games, gamble at an Indian casino, shop, tell HausFrau to handle basic chores and security, and watch Netvids.

After a nice walk, you head to work, which is two doors down the hall from your bedroom. You slide your SmartReader into its cradle, kick on the big wall display, and check the overnight progress by your overseas subcontractors in Bangalore and Singapore, review the latest work orders from your clients and check your schedule of appointments.

Your scheduler reminds you that you have a parent-teacher conference later in the day at the cram school for your boy, Elroy. The scheduling software has already made sure your ex, Jane, can attend as well.

Your eldest child, daughter Judy, is dealing with a very different kind of educational experience since she graduated from high school. During her midday break from troubleshooting traffic problems on the Internet 4 ultra-high-speed data backbone, she's using a remote connection to catch an Electric University professor's lecture on neural nets.

When it's time to head to Elroy's school, you'll unplug your electric car from its dock in the garage and pull silently into the street. Golden light beams warmly through the sun roof. Life is good.

CAPTION(S):

2 illustrations, box

ILLUSTRATION: (1 -- P. 1 -- color) The Future Is Now

Barbi likeness in futuristic household setting (no cutline)

Jon Gerung/Staff Artist

(2) Jetsons (no cutline)

Box: Household Technology; 2000 and Beyond (color doubletruck)

Jon Gerung/Staff Artist