The IPFS whitepaper describes IPFS or the InterPlanitary File System thus:
The IterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a peer-to-peer distributed file system that seeks to connect all computing devices with the same system of files.
Today, the internet uses location based addressing. IPFS uses content based addressing. What IPFS is and how it works is explained in very simple terms in this video. This article, What is IPFS? - A Beginner's Guide, digs into the details a bit more.
Filecoin is a decentralized network for storing content that uses IPFS and blockchain technology. This video helps you understand Filecoin.
Key to understanding how IPFS works is having an understanding of Merkle DAGs. How all this works together is explained in this article, What's really happening when you add a file to IPFS?
So what does all this mean?
It means that things like IPFS, Filecoin, Merkle DAGs and such can be used to flexibly store information that will always be available and you can trust that the information has not been tampered with. A complete audit trail is provided in an immutable digital distributed ledger. All of these things provide the physical "stuff" that is necessary to effectively employ the logical "stuff" like knowledge graphs that are used to represent XBRL-based digital financial reports.
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Splitting a Directed Acyclic Graph into Components
Installing IPFS Command Line (This video walks you through installation)