Cartography is built on ancient underpinnings, but its modern form bears little resemblance to that of the Renaissance, during westward expansion in the United States, or even its Twentieth Century academic incarnation. Modern cartography is a cosmos of technology, research, thought, and practice, all with varying degrees of relatedness to each other and to cartography itself. Elements grow and atrophy, their gravities creating different relationships; constant change held together by the gravity of cartographic center.
