Pay no attention to the yen, but watch the euro. Matt Drudge? Forget the renegade Internet journalist. The next big broker of cyber power may well be an on-line lawyer.

As 1998 draws to a close, a new year awaits, portending waves of new styles, trends, technologies and ideas that will influence consumer attitudes and behavior. Young & Rubicam, a New York-based advertising agency, forecasts trends for clients and employees in periodic electronic messages that have been collecting in my e-mail in-box. The messages synthesize reports from 70 Y&R scouts worldwide who comb the news to identify stories that are metaphors for evolving patterns of thought and behavior.

"One of the very big trends is the return to fundamental everything," said Marian Salzman, 39, Y&R's chief futurist. "People are going back to basic truths: right or wrong, black or white."

Relativism, New Age equivocation, and lawyerly use of language (epitomized by President Bill Clinton's sworn testimony) increasingly will give way to concrete, old-fashioned, bedrock truths: "People want churches. They don't want to channel themselves through crystal," Salzman said. To cite one example: The number of people buying kosher food is rising far beyond the population of Muslims and Jews, as consumers return to a traditional, religious style of food hygiene.

Likewise, parents realize that education systems and parenting in the '80s and '90s have failed to develop children who can compete. Home schooling, educational software and private tutors will be in greater demand.

Don't plan on this return to basics slowing life down. "We used to be living 40-hour-a-week lifestyles," said Salzman. "Our expectations were for 12-month periods. We're getting better and better at coping with 24/7 lifestyles." That means 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Just typing the words feels exhausting.

As private life and work converge, lines blur between friends and family, entertainment and education, schmoozing for fun and schmoozing for profit. A typical convergence product for children is Carmen San Diego software, classified as edutainment.

"In this world of blurring, we want things that haven't changed at all: rules, laws," Salzman said.

Europe's transition to a single currency represents collective agreement among nationalities on a unit of value that won't fluctuate daily: "It's being embraced. The only way to deconstruct the European Union would be a civil war," she said, noting that her last hotel bill in Paris was denominated in euros. With the rise of the euro, look for tougher commercial competition from European companies. "Unified Europe means a three-way struggle for power among yen-land, dollar-land and euro-land," Salzman said.

Companies, in this country as well as overseas, increasingly will hire free agents to work on projects and then to move on. Transitional employment frees companies from long-term obligations, bloated payrolls, expensive benefits and other entanglements.

Smaller might be better. "In a world in which Amazon.com can outmaneuver Barnes & Noble, it's clear that size is no longer a prerequisite for success," Y&R said. Watch for conglomerates to spin off subsidiaries in the way that General Motors will spin off Delphi in 1999.

As employment and social welfare safety nets change and crumble, people must take more responsibility for their own futures, according to Y&R's Future Dialogue newsletter …