**6. Challenges in creativity and cartography**

There are two realities in our thinking about geography and cartography intersections today. One is that we now have more than enough maps about every place and landscape so there is no reason for anymore. However, that geographic arrogance needs to be countered with some humility that tells us that we neither know much about some places nor we have maps of some important topics. Geographic knowledge depicted on maps, whether on traditional early twenty-first-century maps of places, landscapes and regions, is very uneven. If we consider the world's nearly 200 states, there are many more maps about some states and regions than others. The unevenness is in many cases reflected in a rich versus a poor world, with a few rich countries having many more maps than most poor countries. To fill or narrow these "gaps," we will

need new maps that portray existing and familiar features about countries and cities, such as economies, cultures, population growth, racial and gender inequities as well as transport arteries, tourism attractions, elections results and health care. The second reality is that something is happening to the "mapping worlds" today. A case might be made that with increased globalization, however that is defined in a transdisciplinary, cultural or political context, there is less need for maps. The argument continues that the names of places in the news about the world's economies or cultures or politics are becoming more familiar to the ear and where they are on a map is not important or necessary. Advocates of this position might argue that time is more important than distance, that is, how long it takes to contact or get to a place in person or by some machine technology is more important than if it is north or south of the equator or an interior or landlocked country. These same individuals support the thinking that in a "mapless" world one does not need a map to travel from X to Y. The GPS aficionado would declare that having such a device in a personal car or on a plane or your wrist is all you need to get from a point of origin to a destination. The travel time is important and direction and distance and what is "in between" are not. Paper and folded maps, which were once important, are considered almost antique documents for those traveling from Point A to Point B. Users of such maps care about what is "in between" points; their car dashboard map or social media map is more like a toy or gimmick than an instrument that evokes curiosity about a place or landscape feature. A cyber map is like a blank piece of paper with a few points connected.

For those who think that we know much, or too much, about the planet, they need more than a dose of humility to reflect on the unevenness of our planetary knowledge. This vast unevenness in knowledge and maps is reflected in places and subjects we know much about, places we know little or very little about, and places where we have almost no knowledge or maps. The terrae incognitae on the planet exists not only in polar and tropical worlds, but also in sparsely populated areas on all continents, including Antarctica. The map knowledge about places within the United States, France, Italy, and Japan is just as uneven as our map knowledge about Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Mexico, Peru or the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The "silences" are rampant when it comes to mapping knowledge about major and minor cities, ethnic heritages, languages, religions, livelihoods, migrations and archeological finds. If we placed a grid of equal-sized cells over a world map and entered in each cell the amount of knowledge we have today, the result would be another map of vast unevenness not only on continents but also within countries and cities. That same map would also include squares over the world's oceans and seas where there is vast unevenness in place/environment knowledge. In short, the geographic knowledge about what is below the surface is next to nothing in most places. There is some knowledge about potential mineral deposits or valuable fishing grounds or territorial sea conflict or major transport routes or origins of violent weather, but there are many places and regions with few or any maps of what is below the surface. The aquae incognitae are one of the major regions or places on the map that beg for more place knowledge about subsurface landforms, migrating fish, buried mineral deposits, environmental pollution levels, potential tourism sites and perhaps even human habitation.

A cursory examination of present-day maps and map knowledge about places and environments has many striking similarities to those earliest human sketches on cave walls, rocks, wood and clay. They were using both their knowledge and their imaginations to depict "what was where." Those creative-guiding impulses led them to prepare graphical and cartographical messages for their own knowledge and use and also for succeeding generations. Cartographers today using twenty-first-century cameras and satellites, whether women or men, amateurs or professionals, display some of the same artistic skills and curiosity levels as the ancient cartographers to map and remap familiar and unfamiliar places on Planet Earth and beyond.
