One major obstacle is developers have either encountered or created entire ecosystems of problems they can't solve that get inherited whenever and wherever software is introduced. Proposing to add evergreen issues around security, data entry and retention, connectivity, vendor lock-in, and update cycles is frequently a shitty trade for whatever notional (often fictional) productivity improvement is being proposed by injecting software into a workflow.
Do you mean something like "smart" appliances?
I mean they're an excellent example, but this is just as true for the overwhelming majority of B2B productivity suites I've encountered. Hell, digital cameras didn't improve photography, they just killed three industries and saddled just about everyone with data retention and migration problems and that's without even getting into the social effects of ubiquitous cameras combined with social media or the surveillance state they've made possible.
Digital cameras made photography more accessible to people though, even if they didn't improve it (in an artistic sense) directly.
Being able to take pictures at effectively zero marginal cost, and being able to see them instantly, both make it much easier to get into the hobby.
More accessible? Barely. Kodak disposables and Polaroid cameras were so common they were frequently used as toys by children. Also you can't claim zero marginal cost. If anything continuous data retention headaches make it more expensive (in terms of time) to take and keep photographs than any point in prior history. The costs just moved from the camera to the photo album.
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I would argue the camera becoming an app on a phone has done this more than digital cameras. You don't need a separate device, you always have it with you.
A big benefit here is public transparency and citizen video evidence. Like when ICE murdered Alex and Renee