The tragic Boston terrorist attack is now the most photographed crime scene in history... and the amount of data generated by the Boston crime scene will seem minuscule in comparison to the data generated before, during and after tragedies that occur 5 and 10 years from now.
Today, a person about to witnesses an attack or tragedy must have already removed a device from their pocket to capture the scene. This severely limits the number of image and video accounts of the actual act and person(s) who set the attack in motion.
As technologies like Google Glass are adopted by the general public, the amount of eyewitness accounts will surge and likely include complete coverage from the time the person drops off a device, to the time it goes off. It may even be possible to follow the suspect through a trail of personal video streams, all the way back to where they reside.
While this technology will have a clear effect on large scale attacks, they also have implications for personal safety as well. Attacking someone wearing Glass provides a high probability the attacker will be recorded and the video preserved as forensic evidence. Overall, the trend is for humanity becoming less violent, and personal recording devices will be a game changer for preventing and solving crime.