Well, fundamentally that's what has enabled it - the cramming of more and more electrickery into cameras began basically in the 80s, but in those days it was still just producing features that were genuinely useful for photographic purposes, at least for some.

But digital photography wouldn't exist at all without complex electronics and processing power - it's fundamentally about electronics, whereas previously photography was all about optics and photo-chemistry. While those days lasted photographic development was still being driven with photography in mind. Once it became electronic it entered the world of modern gadget-freakery - a world of iPods and Bluetooth, telephones that take pictures, and all the rest of it. That, I'm afraid brought a whole new group of consumers into play - a group that had little real interest in photography itself, but was pretty much obsessed with the gadgetry side of it. And they were so numerous that their requirements were the ones the manufacturers inevitably strove to meet.