"All of humanity's problems stem from man's *inability* to sit quietly in a room alone." - Blaise Pascal

Smart phones etc just prove that we can't sit quietly in a room alone.

> Computers, TVs, video games, and smartphones have solved that problem.

No, they exacerbated the problem. The point of the quote is not the being alone, but the doing nothing. All your examples just made it harder to do so because there’s always something you can distract yourself with. The point is that you should be able to be alone with your thoughts and nothing else.

How is that quiet or alone? Stuff you listed is exactly the perfect enemy of what Pascal meant.

BP died in 1662 and that's a translation. The phrasing isn't quite timeless or perfect. The central point anyway is the ability to be without entertainment and possibly also focus. Not just people.