Hi @nicknicely & welcome…
You got an account that we call a Pod and that’s a good thing to start.
You ask good questions : what is the link with the internet I use ?
My answer would be a ‘normand’ answer : it depends on how You use internet…
To go deeply, first Solid is based on web standard, so nothing is really new it’s just the way to link all those things…
The main principle is to separate data & apps.
I would say that the aim of Solid is to allow each user to manage it’s data.
I suppose you currently use mail, bookmark, chat, or social apps. The problem with those apps is that your data (mails, likes, comments, friends…) are stored on multinational company databases and you have to be agree with their policy ( sell, aggregate,…) … Policies that none of us read…
With Solid you got a space ( or more that one) like a Google drive where you put your data and you can choose to migrate it to one or another provider, you can also become a provider…
But the most interesting is the way the data is stored, it is based on LinkedData, to link data and link knowledge bases ( like database in common world)
Everyone can store the data he wants and build apps that link it . For example recently, @walter.almeida has build an app to help user to store the place he visits and share it with his friends. The app is linked to DbPedia a knowledge base that provide all Wikipedia in LinkedData format, so if you use this app and say I visited ‘the Eiffel tower’ it is linked to that kb, and you instantaneously get a lot of information about that place or what can be visited aside.
On Solid, You can store images, videos, blog, documents, website, apps and link them the way you want…
Finally Solid is just a space to play and to do what you want allowing you to not depend on major company…
Personnaly I’ve for worked on many prototypes to play based on libraries that other contributors build & recently worked on Shighl https://scenaristeur.github.io/shighl for Solidarity
https://scenaristeur.github.io/solidarity/
with @jucole a chat app based in Solid
And now I’m on Agora https://scenaristeur.github.io/agora/
Solid is a way to reverse the use of internet.
What is your use of internet? Are interested in developing apps? Or just want to try what other build?
Feel free to ask, many apps are build by some interesting involved people