On the larger issue, we seem to feel it a failure when we scale up the quantity of information one or more orders of magnitude and then can't come up with quite as clean an interface. I still find individual icons superior for relatively small data spaces. Depending on screen size, users can view up to 100 icons simultaneously. Of course, little is gained if each and every icon is identical, like Finder folders. However, icons can carry rich information and, in the better designed systems, remain relatively constant in location, so that users can depend on motor and spacial memory for locating repeat information.
Icons soon break down, however, when either of two conditions exist.
One, there is just a lot of information, and no amount of display space is going to enable users to see either the entire informaiton space at a glance or even discrete chunks at a glance. Two, the items are compound, rather than complex. If you have 100 different applications, each with their own specific icon carrying discrete information, icons really work. If you, however, have 100 address book files, where the differentiation is purely textual, icons make little sense. You start a pile by dropping one document icon on another.