The controlled transport of electric charge by electrons through nano-scale electric circuits forms the basis of modern electronics. Motivation for developing faster electronics comes from many directions: faster computers and more sensitive instruments will allow more reliable prediction of natural disasters and deeper insight into the workings of nature by ever more sophisticated modelling; ultrahigh-speed communication systems may, one day, permit specialists to perform remote surgery and will make healthcare more efficient in many other ways, to mention only a few of many possible implications.

Rendering electronics more powerful means ever faster control of currents on ever smaller scales. Microelectronics therefore naturally and inexorably evolves towards atomic-scale charge transport control. A question of central importance for the development of science and technology is whether electron-based information processing and storage can possibly be down-scaled to atomic dimensions and sped up to the atomic time scale, i.e. to optical frequencies. Can these ultimate limits be approached, or reached and implemented in practical devices by exploiting electric interactions (electronics), magnetic interactions (spintronics), or collective electron motion (plasmonics)? Can the electric field of infrared or visible light be used to control electric signals in future atomic-scale chips, just as microwave fields do in current state-of-the-art nano-scale circuits, realizing the ultimate electron-based information technology: solid-state light-wave electronics? Answering these questions is one of the most exciting missions of attosecond science.