The thing about computers is that yeah, they're awesome at communication, but they do a lot of other stuff too that has nothing to do with person to person transmission of information. IMHO task-oriented UI makes the most sense because I use my computer as a general-purpose tool to get stuff done. In all use cases I find myself performing a type of task. Only in a subset of cases do I find myself communicating with a person.

I guess I'd call myself more of a power user, but when I look at what I've got going on my computer at night it typically looks like this:

- playing a video game

- talking to arbitrary group of friends on skype over headset

- streaming video to twitch (to whomever is watching)

- programming my side project on my laptop during downtime (waiting for people to connect in-game, etc.)

- browsing the web (looking up game items, watching funny videos, researching some kind of programming thing I'm figuring out)

- monitoring my inbox

- monitoring my twitter feed

Talking to my friends on Skype is definitely direct person to person communication. But even then, I think more along the lines of "1. I want to have a group conversation with Friend A, B, and X, 2. I'd like to communicate with them through the medium of Skype, 3. open Skype 4. add the specific friends I want to talk to to my conversation, 5. go ham". There's no one friend in particular I would "open" first, and subsequently open other friends into. That seems backwards. It's more about what I want to do, not necessarily who I want to talk to.