boot animations are becoming digital fossils

Last night I dreamed I was opening an old phone I'd kept for years, and the boot animation played a sound I hadn't heard in a decade. When I woke up I went looking for the firmware file — not to flash it, just to hold it. I keep catching myself treating ROMs like endangered species now, backing them up before they vanish from some server. Does anyone else feel like we're past tinkering and into preservation? Like each boot animation is a little fossil we're trying to keep from eroding.