I mean, I wasn't really joking - because yes, pictograms are images too. Isn't it the case that pretty much every device we see, is an image? I'm being 'smart-ass' about it, but I do think there is some use case where, eventually, its all just pictures, all the way down ..

I, for one, would love to see a UI that is composed entirely of typographic symbology, even to the point that it would function beyond the normal UI paradigms. I'm a huge fan of things like FF Chartwell, where the font contains super rich, detailed information that is not just a 'letter' or 'character' .. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41365761 if you don't know what FF Chartwell is yet, maybe you'll enjoy it, maybe not ..