“A white paper is an authoritative report or guide informing readers in a concise manner about a complex issue and presenting the issuing body’s philosophy on the matter. It is meant to help readers understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision.” Wikipedia
Most of the players in this space issue white papers, briefs that articulate for investors and the world explaining the technology and intention of the big data world. White papers are some of the most authoritative statements about what big data is and what it can do.
From the horses’ mouths:
White papers from the blockchain space:
The one that started it all: Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper Bitcoin: a Peer-to-peer Electronic Cash System.
Fatom’s white paper on scaling blockchain for data management: Factom_Whitepaper
Ethereum’s white paper on its next generation smart contract and decentralized application platform.
Blockstream’s white paper on sidechains.
Ripple Labs’ The Ripple Protocol Consensus Algorithm.
Airline industry white paper on economies of distributed ledger.
Multichain’s private ledger white paper. Nice summary of blockchain in the introduction.
Big Data White Papers
IBM’s white papers on Watson, its big-data machine learning project.
SAS’s white paper on big data and big data analysis.
Oracle’s enterprise big data white paper