Businesses connect with customers, providing information and making sales online, across borders and time zones. Friends reconnect with each other across the years. Community groups reach out to their supporters and those they serve across economic and social barriers.

The technology that's created this incredible virtual conversation is powerful, and has given those who may have been ignored previously a voice to create change in their communities, in their careers and in their lives. Even those who aren't checking Twitter, Facebook and MySpace every few minutes are starting to understand the changes these communications methods are having on society. We're seeing it in the response to disasters, like Hurricane Katrina and more recently, the disastrous cyclone in Myanmar (and the even more disastrous reaction by the military government of the former Burma). We're seeing it in the way politicians, in the U.S. and elsewhere, are using the Internet to connect directly with their supporters, raising amazing amounts of money and gaining foot soldiers for their door-to-door campaigns.

But not everyone is benefiting from the power of social publishing.

The barriers to publishing have been lowered considerably with the ease and low cost of personal web pages and blogs, but many people, even in the world's most prosperous countries, still have no access to the Internet or a computer, or lack the education to effectively use those technologies even when made available through a public library or other means.

According to an annual study conducted by Parks Associates, 18 percent of American homes still have no Internet access, a total of 20 million households, and only seven percent of those "disconnected" homes planned to obtain service in the next year. Among American heads of households, one in five have never used email. And the statistics are even more discouraging in less-developed countries and where local governments have placed restrictions on the use of computers and the Internet, chilling the potential free speech benefits of social publishing technologies in their countries.

Social publishing technologies have the potential to advance human rights around the globe, as we take up virtual conversations across national borders and cultures. To make this truly effective, however, we'll need to make sure we're not leaving some of us out of the loop, effectively disenfranchising the very people who need to be heard the most when it comes to human rights.

Today, bloggers from around the world have chosen to participate in "Bloggers Unite for Human Rights." I'm pleased to be one of them. As we celebrate the enjoyment and commercial opportunities social publishing is creating, let's keep in mind those on the other side of the "digital divide" and commit to working to closing that gap and listening for their voices.