The fear that technological innovations will make some types of jobs obsolete is common. Movies, television and other popular media often represent this fear with simplistic narratives—presenting technology as a potential threat to human workers, with machines able to take on human roles or even to pose an existential threat to humanity—in a view that sees technology as disruptive, diminishing current jobs and limiting hope for the future. Though technological change will always have disruptive aspects, its true impact is more nuanced, with both winners and losers emerging in response.

One clear winner in the popular distribution of tech innovation has been Apple. (Full disclosure: I grew up in a family of Apple fans. My first computer was an Apple with 16K of memory; for a grade-school science project I used it to calculate prime numbers.) The company's latest product with the potential to change the way we work is a feature of its new iPhone—a built-in, voice-controlled "smart assistant" called Siri, which will allow users to efficiently take care of some of the mundane tasks they might previously have turned over to human assistants. This software is yet another example of new technologies being made available by the regular advancement of computer processing capacity, and it won't be the last. With software's increasing potential to take over certain job functions, taken to an extreme, one might ask: if we don't need people, will we need office space?

In my first job out of college, in order to distribute a memo or a report, the procedure was to write out the text by hand and then turn this scrawl over to one of the ladies in the typing pool. The draft copy from the typewriter would need to be reviewed for errors, and if nothing was wrong, it would then be turned over to staff members who would photocopy and distribute the memos. When I describe this process to analysts just out of college, I get quizzical looks.

The interesting thing is that, as early word-processing software was introduced and staff members started writing their own documents, the total headcount never really changed. Granted, I was at a government organization and the incentives to efficiency were not as extreme as they are in the private sector, but the organization still saw a good deal of turnover due to retirement. The new workers that were brought in had better skills and were able to use all of the new tools being introduced in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Using this software, the new workers were able to produce more content a little more quickly. The process can be faster in the private sector, where, as labor productivity improves, all other things being equal, wages tend to increase. Firms are earning more for the same inputs and, as profits increase, workers are more likely to be successful when asking for a raise. As productivity increases, consumers also benefit as firms are able to sell more goods for a lower price.

It remains to be seen whether the technology behind Siri will eventually have effects as far-reaching as innovations such as word-processing software and email have. However if Siri is even marginally successful, the process of competition will drive others such as Microsoft and Google to step up with competing software.

One can imagine that if Siri is successful as a voice-activated assistant, as competition improves performance, "smart assistants" will evolve into "intelligent assistants" that could independently handle mundane tasks done by humans today. For example, rather than calling a group of people to negotiate a time for a meeting, one might ask software to reach out to other intelligent assistants, and that the machines could quickly settle on a time suitable for everyone. There is any number of potential uses for such software.

The impact of such improvements on firms and staffing could be mixed. Sure, some workers who only handle mundane tasks because they can only handle mundane tasks would face an uncertain future. For others though, such innovations might bring opportunity, as firms could start to use administrative workers for other more productive functions like client management or client outreach.

The introduction of new technology often has the potential to change the demand for space as firms experiment with ways to substitute machines for labor. To the extent that firms use technology like Siri to simply eliminate the mundane tasks of administrative workers, it has the potential to reduce the demand for office space as firms eliminate positions. More likely though—if we were lucky enough to see this assistant software evolve into some sort of low-level artificial intelligence—it would give firms an ability to use workers for more creative and productive tasks. And all those creative workers will still need office space.

JIM COSTELLO