Recent technological, geophysical, and societal forces have fundamentally altered the structure and functioning of human environments. Prominent among these forces are the rise of the Internet; rapid rates of global environmental change; and widening rifts among different socioeconomic, racial, religious, and ethnic groups. The present article traces the influence of these conditions on individuals' cognition, behavior, and well-being. New theoretical questions are raised and conceptual frameworks proposed to understand how global conditions are restructuring people's relationships with their everyday environments. New directions for psychological research and practice aimed at reducing global threats to personal and societal well-being are discussed.

Disaster Medicine is a relatively new multidisciplinary field of science with clear public health implications as it focuses on improving outcomes for populations rather than for individual patients. As with any other scientific discipline, the goal of public health and disaster research is to create new knowledge and transfer evidence-based data to improve public health. The phrase "lessons learned" has crept into the disaster lexicon but must be permanently erased as it has no place in the scientific method. The second edition of Koenig and Schultz's Disaster Medicine: Comprehensive Principles & Practice adds to the growing knowledge base of this emerging specialty and explains why "lessons learned" should be discarded from the associated vocabulary. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2017;11:610-611).