The doom-mongers are dusting off their sandwich boards.

Northern Rock is being propped up by the taxpayer. Oil is at $100 a barrel. And how long global economic stability will last is anybody’s guess. Put simply, say the alarmists, the end is nigh.

In such a light the (relatively) frugal Christmas spending of UK consumers looks like good sense ­ though the highest-ever spend at Sainsbury’s does suggest a drowning of sorrows instead.

But unlike the last major economic upset, when the dot com bubble burst, this time the technology sector is not at the eye of the storm. In fact, assuming the fallout from the US sub-prime mortgage fiasco turns out to be turbulence rather than a tempest, the IT industry has much to gain.

Last week, a CBI report on the financial services industry stated that technology investment plans are at their highest level since 1997, even as business volumes are falling at their fastest since 1991.

And alongside the almost uniformly gloomy Christmas trading figures from high-street retailers were uniformly impressive rises in online sales. Marks & Spencer might have been down 2.2 per cent overall, but its web sales were up by almost half.

Sceptics may say that e-commerce is starting from such a low base that huge rises are not as meaningful as they appear. But a trend is a trend, particularly when it is in the shadow of a looming recession.

Financial institutions are looking for IT-enabled efficiency to help them through a sticky patch. And consumers, keener than ever for a bargain, are increasingly finding it on the internet.

Confidence in technology ­ both as an entity and as a business proposition ­ took a battering at the end of the 1990s. Now is the time to reclaim lost ground.

Straitened economic conditions play to technology’s key selling points: speed, efficiency, lower overheads and so on.

So put away the sandwich board, stop rounding up the animals two-by-two, and get online and spend. Your economy needs you.