My Dumb Tongue

Of all the awesome EngineerGirls past, present, and future, I dedicate this essay to Champa Dadi, my grandma and all-time favorite engineer.

My tongue is so dumb. My speech therapist and I have been teaching my tongue how to make the ‘r’ sound for years and still, it rrrrrrrrrrefuses to do it. It doesn’t llllllike the ‘l’ sound either, and it used to want nnnnnnnnnothing to do with ‘n.’ My tongue is constantly squirming when it’s supposed to be sitting still, but when I tell parts of it to move against my teeth to make a certain sound, my tongue short-circuits and plays dead. Trust me. My tongue is a really, really dumb object.

My tongue is dumb, but I’m not. I’ve tried all kinds of reprogramming, debugging, and hacks and none of them work. This is why I’ve decided it’s time for a total tongue upgrade. I’m going to turn my dumb tongue into a genius by designing a biomedical implant. Even though my invention will only attach to the tongue, I’m going to call it SmartMouth.

SmartMouth is going to be super smart, and it won’t be brilliant at just one thing, either. It’ll help people with all kinds of speech problems, not just people who can’t get their r’s like me. Kids, grown-ups, grandparents…anyone who has trouble pronouncing words and letters will want to try SmartMouth. And helping people with dysarthrias isn’t its only function! SmartMouth will also help anyone who’s learning a new language get their accent and pronunciation exactly right. You’ll still have to know what words you want to say and when to say them, but the language library in the SmartMouth app will make sure your tongue always forms the perfect u, ú, ü, uh, ue, ui, au, augh, or eau. My favorite feature of SmartMouth is another one that anyone and everyone will want to try. The SmartMouth TasteSwapper will let people choose what they want their food to taste like. For example, kids who hate the taste of a certain food but have to eat it anyway can just set the SmartMouth TasteSwapper to trick their tastebuds into making every bite of broccoli taste like their favorite candy. Just open the SmartMouth app and you can make disgusting taste delicious!

SmartMouth will be a tiny central signal processing unit that’s implanted into the top of a person’s tongue. Wires that are thinner than a strand of hair will be embedded in all the tongue areas that need extra help. For example, if a person who’s had a stroke can’t move the right side of their tongue, then the electrodes will only need to go on the right side. If a person wants to upgrade their pronunciation or taste powers, then electrodes will go everywhere. Implanting SmartMouth won’t take long, so doctors and dentists will be able to implant it in their offices. Also, SmartMouth can stay in forever, but it’s easily removed for upgrades or battery changes, or if the implant’s just not for you.

Once it’s implanted, SmartMouth will begin monitoring how you talk and use neural engineering techniques to learn how to help your tongue work better. SmartMouth will quickly start to anticipate your speech and help position your tongue for perfect pronunciation. SmartMouth can be set to help your tongue 100% of the time, but if you want to practice speaking without SmartMouth’s help, SmartMouth will monitor your progress and give feedback on what sounds you still need to work on and tips on how to improve.

To make your dumb tongue smart, SmartMouth will need to know everything about your mouth. You can enter this information yourself on the app, or you can upload your records. SmartMouth will then upload all the information to a smart network, which will analyze it and send customized instructions back to your SmartMouth.

SmartMouth has to connect to online networks. This means that cyber criminals and companies could gain access to personal information and use it in annoying, or even illegal ways like spam, phishing, or identity theft. Another risk of connecting biomedical devices to online networks is having companies use your health information to discriminate against you.

The safety and security of a smart object are just as important as its super cool features, and one of the best ways to protect SmartMouth data is with encryption. If the SmartMouth network is hacked, encryption makes it so the hacker receives a stream of unintelligible word soup. Other protections include patrolling for malware, bots, and hackers and kicking them out of the network if they’re found.

Whether you want to perfect your Portuguese, substitute the taste of sauerkraut with Skittles, or just get your glitchy tongue to behave, SmartMouth is the right invention for anyone who wants to make their dumb tongue smarter. Don’t be a smart mouth, but make sure to get one!