You probably know by now that I work on Launchpad, and that I help make Launchpad and the version control tool Bazaar play nicely together.
But if you aren't a programmer, neither of those sites are going to help you much in your never-ending quest to understand what it is I do all day. Certainly, I've always had trouble explaining version control to the uninitiated.
Rands (aka Michael Lopp, author of Managing Humans) describes version control as capturing context. If you still don't get it, ask questions here.