What are the most influential papers in the world of Big Data?  Let me suggest:

http://bit.ly/BigData1 We face a data management problem: IDC 2010 Digital Unverse Study
http://bit.ly/BigData2 First reference to “Big Data” I found on the web, on Nature 455
http://bit.ly/BigData3 In 2008, “Parallel programming in the Age of Big Data” described MapReduce as a framework that gained prominence on large web sites.
http://bit.ly/BigData4 “The pathologies of big data” by Jacob Adams clearly explained the limitations of the relational database model
http://bit.ly/BigData7 An introduction and overview of “NoSQL databases” by Christof Strauch.
http://bit.ly/BigData18 My favorite document as of May 2011 is Dr Raplh Kimball “The evolving role of EDW in the era of Big Data Analytics”
http://bit.ly/BigData6 “A co-relational Model of Data for Large Shared Memory Banks” proposes a common query language for accesing relational or unestructured data
http://bit.ly/BigData13 McKinsey “Big Data: The next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity” focuses on the economic transformation
http://bit.ly/BigData17 “The Promise and Peril of Big Data” by The Aspen Institute
http://bit.ly/BigData8 GigaOM “Big Data 2011 Preview” talks about opportunities for new business models.
http://bit.ly/BigData11 “Hadoop and MapReduce: Big Data Analytics” provides suggestions on adopting commercial Hadoop implementations
http://bit.ly/BigData9 “Tapping into the power of Big Data” from PricewaterhouseCoopers is on revising the CIO’s data playbok.
http://bit.ly/BigData12

“Introducing LINQ to HPC”by David Chappell describes the internal Microsoft approach to process unstructured data with Windows HPC.

http://bit.ly/BigData14 “Defining Hadoop: Players, technologies and Challenges” covers the Hadoop ecosystem and use cases
http://rww.to/BigData15 “The age of Exabytes: Tools and approaches for managing Big Data” on ReadWriteWeb
http://bit.ly/BigData16 Six guidelines on implementing Big Data Analytics, “TDWI Checklist Report: Big Data Analytics”

 

And to capture the information deluge word of mouth from the last few days, visit my “Digital Genesis”