How many different alphabets are there in the world?

I had this question raising up in my mind since I have read the Literacy Primer. It says that there are approximately 6,000 different languages which are spoken and sometimes written in the modern world. I started to look for the answer, and , surprisingly, I have not found any. May be you have the answer? I doubt anyone could give an exact number.

I found this chart very helpful; although, it does not answer my question.

The Old English Runic Alphabet

You might find interesting that Old English was first written in the runic alphabet which was brought by the Germanic tribes to the British Isles in the early 5th century. The Old English runic alphabet consisted of 31 letters; and it can be written horizontally in either direction. Each letter had a name, and the alphabet was called the futhorc. There is more useful information on http://www.omniglot.com/writing/runic.htm.

There are less than 30 clear runic inscriptions in Old English. A great story about one of the most famous examples has drawn my attention. The Franks Casket, a richly carved whalebone box, was accidentally found in France, where a farmer from Auzon owned it without a slight idea of its value. Now it is on the exhibit in the British Museum. I have heard a lot of stories about interesting findings on the garage sales, but this this one seems unbelievable because the Franks Casket dates back to the 8th century!

Was writing an "intrusion"?

Plato was not the only one who "complained" about "the inhuman and artificial" nature of writing. Seven centuries later, when the written word seemed to be already an integrated part of society, some of the monks in the Egyptian Desert were reluctant toward the graphic transmission of words, particularly the Scripture (the Word par excellence). Let's read Abba Serapion 2 (in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Cistercian Publications, 1987):

"A brother asked Abba Serapion, ‘Tell me a word.’The old man said, ‘What can I tell you? You have taken what belongs to the widows and orphans and put it on this shelf.’ (He saw that it was full of books.)"

Not that they were completely oblivious and ignorant of the entire (Greek-Roman)culture, but they definitely understood the Word different than we usually do: not as information, but as formation. Each word (and conversation) is changing the whole life of a person and the desert monks were asking for a "word", saying: "Father, give me a word that I may live/for my salvation". So, having books was not a problem per se, but keeping them on the shelf without application in one's life was seen as unacceptable. They were afraid that without the oral-aural transmission the word would become dead.

I'm wondering if the invention of writing had the human race forget the enormous power of each word, the word as a meaningful event .