Digital hermeneutics is based on digital ontology, a concept that Michael Eldred (2001) and the author developed some years ago (Capurro 2001). What is digital ontology? Eldred writes:

As long as we remain 'embedded' unquestioningly in the digital casting, everything is manifest as bits. But what does it mean that every appears as a bit? Precisely this view of beings as a whole, that we only admit everything that is in its being when we understand it against the horizon of the digitally functionalized logos represents the encasting central draft thesis of a digital ontology. (Eldred 2001)

The main point concerns the word 'unquestioningly that makes the whole difference between digital ontology as a possible and indeed today's pervasive interpretation of Being and the metaphysical thesis that the digital is the real (Capurro 2006). An epistemological (weaker) version of this thesis is: things are (understood) as far as we are able to digitize them. Digital ontology is pervasive in the sense that it is not necessary that people adhere to it consciously.