Well, I finished listening to The Wolves of the Calla: Dark Tower V not too long ago. It was a hell of a good yarn (though I found the tie-in to Salem's Lot pretty tedious). But one of the main things that struck me was King's attitude toward technology.

I guess it's been there all along in his work, or maybe he's just never dealt with it directly, but there's a definite pattern in the Dark Tower books.

[If you're worried about spoilers, you probably shouldn't proceed.]

I don't remember much technology in the first two books, but Blaine the Mono was definitely a villain, a crazy-ass monorail AI. And King follows this trend in the latest book. So far there hasn't been a single robot or piece of advanced technology that hasn't been evil, deceitful, or deadly.

There's definitely the tone of sort of simplified romantic rusticism that I generally despise. That is, the old ways are always better. Living in huts, shooting rabbits for food...man, that was the life. Trying to understand how the world works, building clever machines...all that makes for is mischief.

King could easily add a sense of balance by having a single robot who doesn't try to kill the traveling band (there are numerous parallels to Oz, but all the tin men here aren't just lacking hearts, they're downright evil mother-fuckers). But his thesis is growing clear as the story marches on toward it's conclusion. Technology is bad. Machinery is bad.

Hell, I half expect that two books from now, when Roland's band marches up to the top of the tower, the Crimson King will turn out to be a big-ass mainframe. And then all they'll have to do is unplug it.