Is my display in power saving mode?

After a certain period of inactivity my system puts my display into
power saving mode.

Is there any way for a program running on my system to know that this
has happened? Presumably Windows knows, since it put the display in
power saving mode in the first place. But perhaps it doesn't record this
fact anywhere.

It is one of the conditions that guarantees there is no sentient being
at the controls, so applications that normally run in the background can
start hogging resources normally reserved for humans. In my case, the
network bandwidth.

The question is: is there any way to find out?

--
Steve Swift
http://www.swiftys.org.uk/swifty.html
http://www.ringers.org.uk