> 2050, that super futuristic year, is only 29 years out, so it is exactly the same as predicting what the world would look like today back in 1992

The problem with this analysis is that the rate of change of the world is accelerating; the world is changing faster now than it was in 1992. Fundamentally, this is driven by the fact that all the changes from the past cause further changes, in an exponential process. Thus a straightforward linear estimate of the future will underestimate how much things will change in the future.