• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, September 4, 2014

Was it just a few days ago that I riffed on the many missteps magazines have made along digital’s revolutionary road? Let me add one more. They lost their sense of humor about it all too.

Oh, if only the dour and defensive print industry had been clever enough to embrace the new while creatively championing the old in quite the way Ikea does in its brilliant 2015 catalog launch video.

This spot-on send-up of the original long-form iPad promo from Apple features one Jorgen Eghammer, an Ikea design guru deliberately channeling Jony Ive -- complete with grey t-shirt and stagy, breathless wonderment. He introduces the life-changing new Ikea catalog with an interface so intuitive, “using it feels almost familiar.” It is not a digital book or an ebook, he insists. “It is a book book.”

Ikea Singapore, originators of the clip, reel off the main tech specs of the catalog, from its expandable dimensions to the simple way you traverse pages with “tactile touch technology.” You just “touch and drag.” It “comes fully charged and the battery life is eternal.”

Some satire wears thin after the initial conceit is revealed and then ground into pavement. But the best satire is always finding new and surprising re-entry into the main joke. Bookmarking, load times, search all get treated. If you want to share an item, well, then “you just share it.” Voice activated password protection is equally intuitive -- just telling someone the catalog is mine.

The irony, of course, is that Ikea’s send-up of gadget lust is not a blithe rejection of virtualization. If you click through to the actual preview of the new catalog, you will see that Ikea continues to lead in uses of AR augmentation of the catalog. As in recent years, the new print catalog synchs with a downloadable app that lets you place catalog items virtually into your home environment and adds details and video.

You don’t need to be a luddite to properly satirize our tech fetishization. It almost satirizes itself.