I wish I had your optimism about that still. Sturgeon's law is probably true, but I no longer believe that the best is recognized or preserved.

The way I see things now is some sort of corollary: Sturgeon was an optimist, and the percent of inferior things is so high it is difficult to find the things that are not. By extension, the best is likely to be lost.

Maybe that's a characteristic of our times though, and less true of the past.