awake once more in the darkness , i grasped the general and the spectacular-that we were nearing the end of the twentieth century of what men call the common era , that fossil fuel and generated electricity were indispensable to the everyday methods of eating , drinking , sleeping , communicating , traveling , building , and fighting , that micromachines of exquisite circuitry could store information in abundance , and that vivid moving pictures in which people appeared and spoke could be transmitted by waves or over tiny delicate fibers more precious than spun glass .