I can't imagine us not pushing electronics to the limit: if we can get a particular level with passive cooling, you can eke out more performance with more power and active cooling. Surely we can move more towards water/liquid cooling, but there's sounds there as well.

And when you are not after performance, you'll be after small size.

I disagree. Low power is currently the lead design principle in modern hardware, anywhere from consumer hardware to enterprise data centers. The least common denominator of a powerful personal computer - the modern gaming console (Xbox Series X or PS5) is already silent and you can't hear the fan. I can't imagine them going fanless in the next couple generations, but who knows what'll happen after that.

We can agree/disagree all we want, I wouldn't bet any money on either "prediction" :)

I can certainly expect "consumer" devices to move towards more of a silent profile, but workstations will still keep aiming for as much performance as possible.

Even today, witness MacBook Air vs Pro lines: Air arguably gets enough performance from very similar hardware, but... you get the point. And in your example of consoles, sure, but also take into account that 8k screens are also around the corner.

Edit: even the two stages of development today involve reducing power in one phase, then pushing that model to the max through pushing the power envelope (eg. Nvidia RTX 3000 -> 4000, AMD Ryzen 5000 -> 7000...).