On the contrary, I think icons have become indicative of actionable text or a button. Just today there was an article on HN that criticized Windows 8 of being too minimalistic-- it was hard to understand at first glance what was merely a label versus an actual button.

And in the real world, icons, symbols, or colors help users immediately understand how to use something (while driving, I would stop at a red octagon even if it didn't explicitly say STOP).