The reason the current icons are good is that they are now unambiguous in their meaning, being up to date with current culture/tech has no bearing on this. The dated-ness of them actually helps, since they come from an age of unitaskers. They are good simply because each icon can only have one possible, reasonable interpretation.* If you were to try and make them modern, in our age of multitaskers, you'd get generic meaningless icons.
*ok, clipboard for paste, but not copy is a little ambiguous, but always appears near the less ambiguous paper doppelganger for "copy."