1. Production in both agriculture and manufacture is increasingly mechanized and driven by inanimate sources of power, not subsistence; products are intended for consumers outside the immediate family, e.g. cash crops.
2. Increasingly work is performed away from the home. Even in the rural setting men perform field work and women are confined to domestic, "non-productive" tasks in the home, as are middle-class urban women. A "cult of domesticity" develops emphasizing the importance of women as supportive wives and mothers and unsuited for work in the world of business and industry. Large numbers of children are no longer necessary to hire out for additional income and there occurs a drop in the birth rate. In "post-modern" societies there has been a rise of feminism that has led to increasing numbers of women in the work-place and a movement towards not only civil, but also economic equality.
3. Cash crop agriculture replaces subsistence agriculture and a money economy becomes increasingly prominent.
4. Diversification and depersonalization of labor relations, i.e., the "Boss" is a distant Corporation Board of Directors, Board of Trustees, State Central Planning Committee, etc. A hierarchical bureaucratic structure prevails.
5. Status is achieved through accomplishments, not inherited through aristocratic birth. There is an increasingly high degree of social mobility. Social roles are fluid and specialized.
6. People live increasingly in an urban setting. Values evolved in cities become those of society as a whole.
7. Sovereignty is seen to emanate from secular sanctions in the people and the ruler or government serves the people as a whole. Nation-state or other, larger political units are made possible by improved transportation and communication and the people are inculcated with nationalism as a means of insuring social control by the nation-state. In the case of multi-national federations such as the U.S., Canada or until recently, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, secular ideologies such as Democracy or Communism can provide the cohesion. (Recently religion has emerged as a revolutionary political force in some areas of the world and is serving as an ideologically unifying force much as nationalism or Communism. E.g. Iran, Iraq)
8. Integrated, highly differentiated governments with well-developed bureaucracies and a unified, secular system of law based on a rational assessment of the needs of society.
9. Mass educational systems aim at developing fundamental literacy to improve economic productivity and create paths for the inculcation of a sense of civic responsibility. Education is rooted in secular, scientific values that promote the political, economic and social integration of the modern state.
10. There is an increasingly large service sector.
11. Physical and social phenomena are explained by reason, rather than by religion or superstition.
12. There is a general acceptance of the concept of progress, which is rooted in economic development and which is seen to bring happiness. A sense of time rooted in productivity not nature.
13. There is a general improvement of health, measured through increased life span, reduced natal and infant mortality rates.

According to McKay, et. al. A History of World Societies, pp. 4

"The modern state is an organized territory with definite geographical boundaries that are recognized by other states. It has a body of law and institutions of government. If the state claims to govern according to law, it is guided in its actions by the law. The modern national state counts on the loyalty of its citizens, or at least a majority of them. It provides order so that citizens can go about their daily work and other activities. It protects its citizens in their persons and property. The state tries to prevent violence and to apprehend and punish those who commit it. It supplies a currency of medium of exchange that permits financial and commercial transactions. The state conducts relations with foreign governments. In order to accomplish even these minimal functions, the state must have officials, bureaucracies, laws and courts of law, soldiers, information, and money. States with these attributes are relatively recent developments."