With Gramsci's analysis of the transformations the human worker underwent in capitalism in the early 20th century as a starting point, this article seeks to point to aspects of how such transformation processes are taking place in capitalism in the early 21st century. To achieve this, we approach the transition from muscular and energetic problem of substituting human for machine labor to the cognitive and informational issue of control in the man-machine couplings. From Taylor's tamed gorilla to Nicolelis' monkey, the forms of subsumption of the worker to capital changed, but not the actual subsumption.
labor and technology; industrialism; psychophysical adaptation; neuroscience; human-machine