“Yummy” say the Morlocks.
“Experts in human-computer interaction say that the real difference between teenagers and their elders is teens’ willingness to experiment with computers, combined with their acceptance of the seemingly arbitrary conventions that are endemic to contemporary computer interfaces. In other words, teens arent worried about breaking their computers, and theyre not wise enough or experienced enough to get angry at and reject poorly written programs. The teens just deal with computers, as they are forced to deal with many other aspects of their lives. These strategies, once learned and internalized, are incredibly effective for working with todays computer technology.”
My bold in the above quote. The gist of this story I’ve come across many times before. The tyranny of current interface idioms looks set to continue for a while. New contexts like mobile computing or paradigms like the web still haven’t killed the WIMP interface.
Aside: Why the hell do I have icons on my phone?
Perhaps though change will be pressed by what people are trying to do with personal tech. Communicate and share experience. OurLifeBits, if you will – is demanding different idioms evolve.
Whether we enquire what lies beneath those idioms is another matter.
Petafloptimism 
The reason you have icons on your phone is, from my experience, purely because the designers designing phone UIs and portals these days came from the web, and can’t quite rid themsleves of the concepts of scrolling, mouse clicks and icons.
I’m the external examiner on a couple of undergrad multimedia design courses, and this summer I’ve seen the first set of students who design intuitively for the phone. What I mean is, they don’t need briefs telling them to design for the phone, but because they’re the texting generation, they’re as comfortable with the alphanumeric keypad and txt language as a data entry method than they are with the point and click interface.
the phone-based projects they showed me just worked. when I asked for their research, there was little. They just knew what the best methods were, because they’ve spent their entire teenage lives texting.
As this new generation start getting jobs in the industry, it’ll be the death of phone ‘portals’ and icons.
And not before time . . .
You have icons on your phone because they and the gestures that are to be implemented for them are hiding the great sophistication of the product (to be) put beneath. Pipe e-mail through a graphic novel, rightclick to adjust your proxy chain, be assaulted in TetrHix or whaever your phone’s version is by a series of probable words in e-mail to a particular person, mudged into shapes.
One-hand analog input; occasional Two-Hand Beautiful Tulip Leaping Crush Attack input.