Modern Cartography

When I was sitting in lecture this past week, I found myself wondering if cartography was a profession that was still practiced. As far as I could tell, most of the world has already been mapped and the age of explorers, like Lewis and Clark, has long been over. So, I decided to go home and discover for myself what the field of modern cartography looks like. In an American Association for the Advancement of Science article, "The New Cartographers," author Emily Underwood states that while paper maps are not really used anymore, it doesn't mean that there is no longer any demand for mapping technology. Instead of fazing out of fashion with the advent of smartphones and personal computers, maps have become digitized and interactive. Though their format has changed, modern maps (like Google maps or navigation apps on smartphones) still focus on the transmission of visual information, like their historical predecessors.