Will you understand the story, will you miss anything, etc?

You can ignore 2, but it's helpful to play the first one. The storyline is completely different but there are some moments that you won't appreciate with playing the original.

Play Bioshock 1, its worth it.

i haven't played infinite yet so i can't really answer the question...

...but play bioshock 1. amazeballz!

Like the others said, Bioshock 1 can sort of help understand but I would highly recommend playing both 1 and 2 because they are great games. I preferred both of them to Infinite but Infinite is still a really good game.

Definitely play BioShock 1, it's developed by irrational too (unlike BioShock 2 that's highly forgetable).

Yes. Almost zero continuity. In fact, infinite is before BS1 in timeline so it's even better to play inifinite before BS1.

BS2 is the best bioshock yet though.

Play the First one before playing infinite, the second one is mediocre so skip it unless you really want to just have played all three.

Yes you could, but why would you want to? If you've never played Bioshock 1, you're really missing out.

I played Infinite before the others and it was fine.