The future of business technology looks like the present of consumer tech

Your smartphone tracks your whereabouts and provides personalized recommendations based on your location. Facebook tracks your networking and sends you personalized ads. You may even have a smart thermostat that knows when you’re too hot or cold.

Most consumers are favoring personalization over privacy, generally ignoring settings on their devices that turn off or adjust your data tracking. Now leading tech companies say that the personalization is also the future of business technology, according to the New York Times.

In recent speeches, Apple CEO Tim Cook and General Electric (GE) CEO Jeffrey Immelt both noted the impact they expect new technologies and internet offerings will have on the business market. Apple’s Cook focused his remarks on internet services that could be developed on Mac computers and delivered via iPhones and Ipads. GE’s Immelt spoke about sensors that would connect electric meters, light bulbs, and cars, and the use of “predictive data” to enable more efficient uses of the devices.

Another example Immelt suggested: tracking jet engines or other machines individually, with each piece of equipment having the equivalent of a Facebook page where the company could track maintenance records and other vital information.

A hundred years ago, Frederick Winslow Taylor came up with management theories designed to maximize workplace efficiency, breaking production into discrete steps and putting workers into very specific factory roles.

Now smart machines and data tracking may foster a new workplace efficiency ethic, though some fear that worker privacy issues are not being addressed.