[ArbitraryLimits]

Unlike the iPad, the iPhone, Dropbox, and "The Web," credit for this metaphor may fairly be given to David Gelertner. Although he applied it to naming files rather than servers.

From http://www.edge.org/conversation/the-second-coming-a-manifes... (1999)

> If you have three pet dogs, give them names. If you have 10,000 head of cattle, don't bother. Nowadays the idea of giving a name to every file on your computer is ridiculous.

For what it's worth he was also the first to use the metaphor of a cloud, although in his sense the cloud represented your personal data and it drifted to follow you, casting a shadow over pavestones representing computers, as opposed to the usual sense of the cloud being an amorphous body of computers.

[Dylan16807]

That's not really the same metaphor. The naming is almost incidental, it's the individual effort going into each item that matters. Most of my 'pet' files are nameless, but they are individually pampered and treated and difficult to recreate.