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Even with x-rays theoretically providing a future 1 Gbps link to Mars, the underlying issue is that the growth of data vastly outpaces the advancements in speed technologies.

In other words, by the time x-ray communication is a reality to the Mars colony, we'd want to copy 50-petabytes (~15 years transfer[1]) or 50-exabytes (~15000 years transfer). The 6-month rocket journey is still faster than those scenarios.

[1]http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(50*10%5E15)+%2F+((1*10...

I keep thinking this will stop because there's a human limit to what we can generate.

But then I install another 60 GB game and realize not any time soon...

Yep. And as I processors reach their ceiling, I imagine more effort being put on precomputed scenarios so that they become more or less glorified look up machines with instructions stringing them together.
I think the better way of phrasing this is that the growth of data vastly outpaces our ability to implement advancements in speed technologies.
Multiple laser beams? That would scale.
Adding a laser beam scales linearly, both in speed and cost. The amount of data we generate, store, and use scales exponentially.
yes but as long as the laser beam can carry absurd amounts of data, that linear coefficient is just fine. Nobody needs to sync trillions of cat videos (which is the source of exponential growth) between Mars and Earth.
No, the nature of technology building upon itself is the source of exponential growth. As long as storage and processor technology continues to improve - and it will - we will find uses for that space, and network technology will need to keep up.