Announcing Aristotle in Your Pocket

A New Way to Read the Classics

My life has been enriched by joyful learning.

Few things give me greater joy than sharing my love of learning with others.

Which is why today is a momentous day.

We have just rebuilt the Great Library of Alexandria for a digital age. We’ve assembled 4,000+ Great Books in one place, built an encyclopedic rabbit hole of interconnections between the books, enabled bookshelf discovery and sharing, created a new mode of reading called “Lightning mode” where you can read works one sentence at a time, and most surreally, embedded an AI tutor, “Virgil,” in the margins of each book, so you can converse with a guide as you read. Just click the yellow button on any page and start a conversation.

Whether you are a super-learner like me, or just starting out, Alexandria was built for you; it’s meant to be a place where you can get the foundation you never got and/or find things you never knew about.

We created Virgil to reflect the attributes of the teachers we look up to, and wish we had more of in the world, Socratic, empathetic, and personable. The greatest cultural treasure is literally un-owned. The IP is public domain. The Midrash says Torah was given in a desert, an ownerless field, deliberately. And yet everyday people choose—or are addicted to doomscrolling and headline-chasing. We want to renew attention and interest in the books — and the conversations — that leave us feeling elevated.

You can go to the web app or download Alexandria in the app store. I love using it on my iPad (link in reply). The Great Books were built to last. And they are open source, everyone's treasure. But we need new form factors and new modes of engagement to help people approach them.

With AI, the time for tradition-rooted innovation is now.