The discussion concerning technological mediation has heretofore chiefly concerned domestic technologies and consumer durables. My paper seeks to expand the discussion to other artifacts and consumers: weapons and military services. Military services are generally regarded by historians as patrons of research or clients of defense manufacturers. We well understand the military's relatively recent role in encouraging rapid technological change and obsolescence by guiding production and providing a market. But less well understood is that in each nation, military services have had to develop their own cultures of consumption in response to rapid technological change. Optimally, such cultures serve to discipline consumption; the reality is much more complicated, with non-military mediators frequently enjoying a significant impact on the outcome.
My paper provides a view on this process by focusing on the rise of operations research among the Anglophonic allies during World War II. Air defense provided the initial seedbed for OR, with OR groups, initially civilian engineers, positioning themselves to educate both producers and consumers of military hardware. OR experts advised research and development scientists about the demands that combat made on their designs. Meanwhile, they developed quantitative and statistical "measures of effectiveness" for their military clients in order to gauge the relative merits of new applications and tactics--in other words, how to consume new military hardware effectively. By quantifying military experience and providing feedback loops between makers and users, OR contributed to an epistemic shift already occurring within the military: a move toward centralized control epitomized by the Cold War military-industrial complex and a political culture characterized by Paul Edward's phrase, "closed world."