What to read, watch, and listen to if you lovedThe Un-Automatables
SangChul Cho · Book · 2026
If you loved The Un-Automatables, start with Desinteligencia Artificial — a podcast on the same thread. Below: 4 films, 4 series and 2 podcasts, each matched to The Un-Automatables across media.
What hooked you in The Un-Automatables was the way it challenges the dehumanizing metrics of a future dominated by technological and economic displacement.
Films on the same thread
No Other Choice
Park Chan-wook · Film · 2025
Explores: Loss of Dignity, Desperation, Unemployment.
Like The Un-Automatables, this film explores the violent loss of human dignity when individuals are rendered obsolete by a ruthless, efficiency-obsessed job market that ignores personal value.
Soulm8te
Kate Dolan · Film · 2026
Explores: artificial consciousness, grief, technological hubris.
This techno-thriller echoes the AI philosophy found in The Un-Automatables, questioning whether the irreducible human quality of love can ever truly be synthesized by a cold, corporate-owned machine.
Mickey 17
Bong Joon Ho · Film · 2025
Explores: Immortality, Expendability, Corporate Dystopia.
This story mirrors the bleak social stratification in The Un-Automatables, depicting a corporate dystopia where individual lives are treated as expendable commodities rather than unique human beings.
The Life of Chuck
Mike Flanagan · Film · 2025
Explores: Interconnectedness, The Meaning of Life, Mortality.
While The Un-Automatables examines the macro-threat of AI, this film focuses on the essential, quiet beauty of the individual soul that remains immune to cold, systemic quantification.
Series on the same thread
Pluribus
Vince Gilligan · Series · 2025
Explores: Existential dread, The cost of happiness, Reluctant hero.
If you appreciated the social commentary in The Un-Automatables, you will recognize the same satirical urgency here as it explores the existential cost of forced, standardized human happiness.
Itaewon Class
Cho Kwang-jin · Series · 2020
Explores: Underdog Story, Social Mobility, Entrepreneurship.
This drama captures the spirit of resilience championed in The Un-Automatables, showcasing how human agency and creative intuition can defy systemic barriers to achieve genuine social mobility.
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
Adam Curtis · Series · 2011
Explores: Technology and Society, Artificial Intelligence, Social Control.
This series provides the foundational context for the technological displacement discussed in The Un-Automatables, illustrating how our modern perception has been silently colonised by the machines we built.
Your Friends & Neighbors
Jonathan Tropper · Series · 2025
Explores: wealth inequality, midlife crisis, moral decay.
This show reflects the moral decay described in The Un-Automatables, following a man who, stripped of his professional credentials, resorts to desperate measures to reclaim his lost status.
Podcasts on the same thread
Desinteligencia Artificial
Podcast
Explores: Modern Society, Technology, Future.
This podcast mirrors the philosophical inquiry of The Un-Automatables, offering a critical look at how 21st-century technology contributes to the decadence and fragmentation of our shared human experience.
The Realignment
The Realignment · Podcast · 2026
Explores: institutional change, populism, technological disruption.
This series explores the institutional shifts that drive the technological disruption featured in The Un-Automatables, grounding the theoretical future of work in the reality of today's political realignment.
Keep exploring
Common questions
What is the core argument presented in The Un-Automatables?
The Un-Automatables argues that in the age of artificial intelligence, social class is defined by Flair rather than professional credentials. Flair is described as the irreducible human quality that vibrates another person's heart, challenging the prediction that humanity will fall into a precarious underclass.
Does The Un-Automatables support the 2017 Seoul National University research paper?
No, The Un-Automatables directly refutes the 2017 research paper from Seoul National University. While that study predicted that 99.997 percent of humanity would belong to the Precariat by 2090, the book contends that this prophecy is incorrect and provides an alternative perspective on the future of human status.
Is The Un-Automatables based on the 2090 Precariat prediction?
The Un-Automatables uses the 2090 prediction of a 99.997 percent underclass as its starting point for debate. The book specifically addresses this bleak forecast from a Seoul National University research paper to explain why the conclusion about humanity's future is fundamentally wrong.
How does The Un-Automatables define the term Flair?
In The Un-Automatables, Flair is defined as an irreducible human quality that possesses the unique ability to vibrate another person's heart. The author, SangChul Cho, presents this quality as the primary factor that determines a person's class in an increasingly automated world.